STUDIES IN THE CIVIL, SOCIAL 
• AND ECCLESIASTICAL 

HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND 



LECTURES DELIVERED TO THE YOUNG MEN OF 

THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE OF 

MARYLAND 



Rev. THEODORE C. GAMBRALL, A.M., D.D 



AUTHOR OF "CHURCH LIFE IN COLONIAL MARYLAND 



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Though these lectures were prepared for the young 
men of Maryland, they will be found to contain much of 
both information and interest to all those whose minds 
have been drawn to the early history of our country. 



PREFACE. 

In a very marked degree Maryland history has 
suffered at the hands of its friends. Desiring to be just, 
and often truly enthusiastic, they have viewed its 
course in the direct light of their own prejudices, and 
the consequence has been a perverted, incomplete, 
unphilosophical presentation. For Maryland history is 
many-sided, having, in its course, involved many ques- 
tions of ver>r diverse kinds,— ecclesiastical, civil, social, 
political, military. Starting in a small, unique colony, 
with peculiar institutions created by a charter, itself the 
outcome of political notions that were fast losing their 
hold on the popular mind, it had to fight its way, often 
in weakness, through those institutions up into larger 
and truer ideas of human liberty. Fight its way; for 
there was always a sufficient number of conservative men, 
who held by what was old, to make the efforts of the 
liberal majority difficult, and to necessitate years of effort 
before success could crown their endeavors. 
^ And this contest went on in all the departments of 
life, political, civil, social and ecclesiastical; in the last 
as eminently as in any other; for ecclesiastical affairs be- 
longed as much to the political life of a people then as 
civil or social affairs did, and probably excited always far 
more of prejudice and passion than either of them. 

To form a just estimate of the history of a people a 
man must transplant himself into the days which he is 
describing. For nearly as much as the Maryland of 



VI PREFACE. 

1776 differed from the Maryland of 1634, does the Mary- 
land of 1893 differ from the Maryland of 1700, the 
period of the greatest and most radical changes in govern- 
ment and policy; and to stand now and argue about 
questions of the policy of the colony then from the civil 
or social ideas of this present time, is folly. We must 
view things from the standpoint of those times, — put our- 
selves in their place; for what might be folly now was 
wisdom then, and certainly what is wisdom now it would 
have proven wicked and absurd to have attempted then. 
And yet this is the way some have attempted to write 
Maryland history. 

Again, Maryland has been unfortunate in the bent of 
mind of her historians. Too many have approached the 
matter in a partisan spirit, as if they would fortify a posi- 
tion, defend a claim, out of her records. In ecclesiasti- 
cal matters this has been most notable. She has had her 
Protestant historians and her Romanist historians. She 
has also had her infidel, or at any rate agnostic, historians, 
and great questions have been tossed about, pretensions 
derided, claims scorned, assumptions set up, assertions 
made, with reckless eftVontery. 

All that can be said is, that such is not the way to write 
history. It is to be written by first determining the facts, 
viewing them according to their setting in the midst of their 
own times, explaining them according to the exigencies 
that created them or the purposes for which they were 
called into being. We are not wiser than the people of 
those former days. W^e may be better grown than they; 
our state of society may be more mature. But according 
to their day and generation they knew as well what was 
good for them as we know now what is good for us. And 
the way to write history is to recognize this fact. 



PREFACE. Vii 

It is in this spirit I have attempted to write these lec- 
tures. I do not call the book a history, for that is an 
ambitious word and very often misapplied. It will be 
found, I trust, a series of panoramic views, full and suffi- 
ciently clear in outline to give every one definite and 
accurate ideas of that earlier life of our State. I have 
endeavored to write without prejudice, and to follow out 
the principles of historical writing that I would suggest 
to others. The people of the province were a sturdy set 
and worthy of all respect. They were of heterogeneous 
elements, viewed in whatever way we will, but at the same 
time they had that power of cohesion and assimilation 
that gave a oneness to their colonial life. And as they 
passed on from year to year they gave to Maryland 
features that commanded the esteem of the country and 
of the world. 

It is gratifying to know that Maryland made herself. 
Neither king nor proprietary was ever her friend, save 
as her prosperity promoted their own. She grew, and 
did so by the liberality of the principles on which her 
government was administered. 

It is my earnest hope that this work may commend 
itself to the favorable judgment of all that shall read it, 
and especially to the judgment of the children of Mary- 
land herself. 

T. C. G. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

FIRST LECTURE. 

INTRODUCTORY. — COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

Apathy of the English; cause, the Reformation. By what title 
colonies might be planted. Commission of Henry VII. to 
the Cabots. Gift of Pope Nicolas to Portugal; of Alex- 
ander VI. to SpaiQ. Settlements of the Atlantic coast 
when charter to Mainland given. Early English attempts. 
Gilbert, Raleigh, Gates. A province imder a charter pri- 
vate property and alienable. Territory discovered or con- 
quered belonged to Crown. Provincials, though English 
subjects, subject to arbitrary will of the king. Prerogative 
the rule of the day. Afterwards parliamentary conti-ol. 
Charter of Maryland: description of. James I. as law- 
maker P- 9 

SECOND LECTURE. 

COMPARISON OF COLONIAL CHARTERS. 

Contrast between charters of different periods. Grantees of 
chai-ters to be at their own charges. Maryland charter 
drawn up after that for Newfoundland. Description of 
proprietary colony. How charter for Pennsylvania differed 
from others. Absolute power and personal freedom. 
Privileges granted to induce emigration. The right of 
legislation by people. People of Maryland insist upon 
right to propose laws. Claims in charters to extend re- 
ligion. Advowson of churches and right to build granted 
Lord Baltimore p. 25 



2 CONTENTS. 

THIRD LECTUIIE. 

LORD BALTIMORE AND THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 

Commemoration of fomiders by various nations. George Cal- 
vert, character, offices, speculations. CeciUus Calvert, 
character, wisdom, success. The troubled times when 
charter given. He-^.erogeneous classes in population of 
Maryland. Maryland charter expression of king's notions 
of best form of government. Manors and manorial prerogar 
tives granted. Revenues to Lord Baltimore from Mary- 
land. Maryland exempted from taxation by king . p. 42 

FOLRTH LECTURE. 

COMING OP THE COLONISTS. 

"Maryland first colony erected into a province." Distinction 
between "colony" and "province." Maryland first colony 
to have boundaries determined. Maryland's loss of ter- 
ritory. First body of immigrants; character of; " servants." 
Disturbances and insurrections. Battle on the Severn. 
Proprietary administration discontinued 1689-1715. Cause 
of troubles. Religion and oaths of supremacy and alle- 
giance. Fu-st colony recalled to take oaths. Ecclesiastical 
claims of Jesuits in Maryland p. 61 

FIFTH LECTURE. 

THE LEGISLATION OF THE COLONY. 

" Conditions of Plantation." Thomas Comwaleys and the 
number of servants introduced. Maryland law-making 
practical. Locke and the laws of Noi-th Carolina. Magna 
Charta and Lord Baltimore's charter rights. Claims of 
Jesuits formulated in 1638. "Conditions of Plantation" 
of 1641. Secretary Lewger,— the man and his position. 
"Parhament composed, with but few exceptions, of 



CONTENTS. 3 

heretics." Lord Baltimore's policy in administration of 
province. Early disagreement in matter of proceeding in 
Assembly. Membership of early Assemblies; imiversal 
right, proxy, representation, special writ. Upper house and 
its membership. Early laws: "Holy Church" and her 
rights and liberties. Trial by jurj-. Right of all men to 
common law. All men rights and Uberties accorduig to 
Great Charter p. 80 

SIXTH LECTURE. 

THE LEGISLATION OF THE COLONY. — CONTINUED. 

"Act concemmg Religion" of 1649. How widely discussed. 
Suggested by Lord Baltimore to Assembly. Honor of it 
claimed by Roman Catholic Church. Religious hberty, how 
grew to be recognized. Nations in early stages knew 
nothing of it. Conscience toward God, late growth. A 
great disturber. Character of early religions. True view 
of reU.gious liberty. WilUam the Silent the true exponent. 
Circumstances preceding the Act. " In leading the colony to 
Maryland by far the greater part heretics." Roman 
CathoUcs would not come to Maryland. Change of policy 
in 1648. Oaths of office changed. Review of the Act by 
sections p 99 

SEVENTH LECTURE. 

THE PROTESTANT EEVOLUTION. 

Peace from 1660 to 1689. English policy toward colonies. 
Events of 1689 consequent upon events in England in 
1688. :Maryland peculiarly circumstanced; the proprietary 
a Roman CathoUc. Charges against Lord Baltimore. 
Protestant Association and its methods. The Revolution; 
in what it consisted. Royal province, meaning. What 



4 CONTENTS. 

reserved to Lord Baltimore; what taken away. Why 
Church provided with settled maintenance. Prevalence of 
immorality; testimony of Yeo, of President of Assembly. 
The law reviewed. "Anglican Toleration" a misnomer. 
Religion and education promoted by the Protestant Revo- 
lution p. 120 

EIGHTH LECTURE. 

THE PROPRIETARY GOVERNMENT TO THE END OF THE COLONIAL 
ESTABLISHMENT. 

Proprietary government restored. Occasion of the restoration. 
Development of spirit of people during royal government. 
Proprietary government favorable to development of 
republican ideas. Consei-vatism of the upper house. Char- 
acter of Charles Lord Baltimore. Character of Frederick 
Lord Baltimore. Great periods of agitation regarding pro- 
vincial matters. The extension of EngUsh laws to colony; 
requisitions for carrying on French War; the Proclamation 
Act p. 142 

NINTH LECTURE. 

MARYLAND AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

Development of a sense of Uberty. Maryland no desire to 
separate from British empire. Illogical position of Eng- 
lish people with regard to the colonies. Question of prin- 
ciple, not of money, with the colonies. Influence of the 
Stamp Act agitation upon development of a love of Ub- 
erty. Maryland constantly excited by great questions. 
Maryland and the General Congress of 1765. Treatment 
of Stamp Act commissioner. Arbitrary interference of 
George III. in English administration. The tax on tea. 
The Boston Port BiU and public feeling. Eddis' descrip- 



CONTENTS. 5 

Hon of condition of Maryland. The Convention of 1774. 
The destruction of tea in Annapolis harbor. The Conti- 
nental Congress of 1774; Maryland's relation with. iMary- 
land and the Declaration of Independence. Maryland dur- 
ing the war. Washington's letter p. 163 

TENTH LECTURE. 

ODDS AND ENDS OF MARYLAND LEGISLATION. 

1634-1784, period of transition. Methods of punishment found 
in :Maryland records; hanging, drawing, quartering, be- 
heading, burning, the pillory, stocks, whipping, cropping, 
slitting the nose, cutting off the hand, the ducking-stool, 
branding in the forehead or hand, boring the tongue. 
Laws in regard to debtors, plaintiffs, defendants. Jury- 
men responsible for a questionable verdict. "Privileged 
Attorneys one of flie Grand Grievances." "Act to reform 
Attorneys, Counsellors, etc." Temperance laws; drunken- 
ness criminal. Ordinaries, laws in regard to. Marriage of 
white woman to negro, the penalty. Maryland and the 
Quakers. IVIaryland and witchcraft. Maryland and the 
Indians. Maryland and the Roman Catholic-s after the 
Protestant Revolution p. 187 

Appendix. 
Chronological Table of Leading Events in Maryland . p. 211 

"The Twenty Cases" of Father White, S. J. . . .p. 221 
Memorial of Father More, Provincial to the Sacred Congre- 
gation for the Propagation of the Faith . . . .p. 228 

Index p. 235 



HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND 



FIRST LECTURE. 

INTRODUCTORY. 
Colonization in the- Sixteenth Century. 

In reviewing the history of colonization in the period 
subsequent to the discovery of America, we are struck 
with how Httle activity was shown by the EngUsh nation, 
the more so because in these later days the English 
people have shown so much more activity than all the 
rest of the world. By nature they are evidently a rest- 
less people; nor is there any territory nor any clime to 
which they are not ambitious to penetrate, and penetrat- 
ing, to leave permanent results of their presence. It may 
be said of them that they never let go what they have 
once had their hand on, and that they not only retain, 
but also incorporate into their empire, whatever they have 
once possessed. 

Why then were they so apathetic through the whole 
sixteenth century? Spain and Portugal were both won- 
derfully active, and extended their dominions and reaped 
wonderful results. Wealth and prosperity and power 
were the immediate results, to Spain especially, so that 
she was able to assume the first position among European 
nations and to dominate her neighbors. Is it that the 
English people have changed in their nature and dispo- 
sition? By no means; for as soon as the success of 
Columbus became known, and the existence of another 
world was determined, we find Henry the Seventh sending 



10 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

out an expedition under the direction of the Cabots, and 
securing for himself a title, under the law of nations, to the 
Atlantic coast of North America, which was aften\ards 
covered with English colonies. 

Besides, nations do not change their nature or dispo- 
sition. They have idiosyncrasies as much as individuals 
have, certain peculiar qualities that belong to their char- 
acter; and while varying circumstances may foster or 
repress their manifestation, yet they are there all the time. 
And as we see, the idiosyncrasy of colonization has been 
manifested by the English people for the last three hun- 
dred years. Other nations, by emulation, have sought 
to colonize, France and Germany, for instance; but their 
attempts have been in a great degree failures, their colo- 
nies flourishing for a while and then languishing, or 
passing into the hands of other people. But the English 
people do not know how to relinquish a colony, imless 
the lesson is taught them by the children of their own 
blood, as the colonies of North America taught them in 
seventeen hundred and seventy-six. They are a colo- 
nizing people, as much so as the Greeks and Romans 
were of old, and like them they carry their own language 
and institutions with them, and make every colony a 
new center for the outspreading of the empire. How 
notable this is in America, where though but a hand- 
ful of people were planted at the first, and where thous- 
ands and ten thousands have been coming through the 
centuries from every country under heaven, yet it is the 
daughter of England still, in language, in institutions, in 
sympathies, in aspirations and, apparently, in destiny. 

No, the apathy of England through the sixteenth cen- 
tury, when Spain was extending her American empire, 



COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. II 

is not to be explained in that way. There has been no 
change in her nature or disposition. The probable and 
almost certain reason is that the English mind was 
occupied in another way, that the thought and the 
energies of the people were given to another subject, a 
subject that had, however, a remote but distinct bearing 
upon the nature of English enterprise whenever ihat 
should be developed. 

And what was that subject? It was the great agi- 
tation that arose early in the sixteenth century concern- 
ing religion, the Reformation period, during which, while 
the nations of southern Europe — Spain, France, Italy, 
Portugal — were disturbed only in a slight degree, so that 
their enterprises were not hindered, the nations of north- 
ern Europe — Germany, Switzerland, Holland, England — 
were agitated to their very center, so that any propensity 
that might have been indicated by Henry the Seventh or 
Henry the Eighth, was quickly submerged in the wild 
waters of discussion, controversy and persecution. 
The world generally attends to but one thing at a time, 
being business-like in its habits. One subject masters a 
period, and only when that subject is disposed of, does the 
public mind feel capable of turning its attention to some 
new thing. 

And so it was that when the whole subject of religion 
had become definitely settled, when the Protestant Church 
of England, with Protestant doctrines, had been definitely 
established in the days of Elizabeth and James the 
First, the English people turned their attention to the 
Western world, and to the extensive territory they had 
acquired a century before by the right of discovery. 
Soon, however, the new spirit developed, and throughout 



12 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

all the classes of society the question of new settlements 
was discussed. With some it was a matter of individual 
enterprise and the bettering of their private fortunes; 
with some it was pure love of adventure; with some it 
may have been, as the old charters said, to extend the 
benefits of the Christian religion to the natives and to 
extend the English dominion; with some it certainly was 
to enjoy greater freedom in religion themselves and the 
right to worship in their own way, as denied by the 
laws of England. But from whatever motive, the whole 
kingdom soon became alive to the great question of 
planting colonies. 

Another interesting subject may well be considered 
in this lecture: by what title it was that colonies might 
be planted in the new countries discovered. It was, 
briefly, by the might of the strongest. Had Columbus 
reached the shores of Asia as he had anticipated he 
would, and as the writings of Marco Polo, who had 
traveled across Asia about the middle of the thirteenth 
century, had led him to believe he should, the Spaniards 
would never have attempted to fix colonies there, or if 
they had they would soon have been compelled to desist. 
There would not have been might enough to secure the 
title. As it was, however, the land discovered had but 
few inhabitants and they not capable of coping with the 
well-armed and well-disciplined Europeans, and conse- 
quently colonies were planted according to the will of che 
adventurers. In some places, it is true, the rights c,i the 
aborigines were recognized, as in Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania, and their lands purchased from them, though 
hardly in any case at an appreciable price. In most 
cases, however, and in particular by the Spaniards, both 



COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 1 3 

the countries and the inhabitants were looked upon as 
a spoil, and the lands, with towns and cities, were appro- 
priated to themselves by the discoverers, and the people 
reduced to a hopeless bondage. 

There can, however, be no reasonable doubt of the 
right of the Europeans to plant their colonies on the 
American continent, with the approval of the natives, if 
possible, and without that approval if necessary. God 
created the earth for man, and a few savage tribes wan- 
dering over immense wastes of forest was never within 
His intention. There are laws superior to written ones, 
laws which man recognizes by his intuition; and looking 
at the matter from this point in time, we feel that the 
right of the strongest, as then exercised, is a natural 
and legitimate right. We must reprobate the cruelties 
practised; we must hedge about the law by insisting on 
all individual rights; we must remember that it was only 
that right that justified to those engaged in it, the whole 
base slave trade when millions were torn from their 
homes in Africa to supply the white man with profitable 
labor. It is a law that requires and commands unlimited 
Christian charity for its commentary. It is a law that 
allowed the nations of antiquity to indulge to brutality 
all their vices upon conquered people, often far better 
than they. It is a terrible instrument in the hands 
of selfish men. But still it is a law, and if it had not been 
observed, and its privileges insisted on, the fairest 
dominion on the face of God'searth would never have been 
created, and the noblest institutions, such as we have,, 
for the fostering of the human spirit, might never have 
existed. 



14 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

But what was the right avowed by the nations of 
Europe when they sent out their colonies to this conti- 
nent? As regards England, this is seen in the com- 
mission given by Henry the Seventh to the Cabots ^vho 
sailed under the English flag. The commission bears 
date of 1496, four years after the discovery by Columbus, 
and runs thus: 

" We grant and give license to the same and either of 
them, or either of their heirs and deputies, to afflx our 
aforesaid banners and insignia on any town, city, castle, 
island or continent by them newly discovered. And 
that the aforesaid John (Cabot), and his sons or heirs, 
and their deputies, may possess and occupy all the afore- 
said towns, castles, cities and islands by them discovered, 
which may of right be subjugated and occupied, as our 
vassals, and their governors, lieutenants and deputies; 
they obtaining for us the dominion, title and jurisdiction of 
the said towns, castles and islands and continents so dis- 
covered." 

The right avowed, therefore, w^as the right to go in 
and subjugate and occupy, — a heathenish application of 
the right of the strongest, as villainous and brutal as any 
that ever disgraced the Pharaohs of old. To recognize 
the rights of the savage at the same time that we would 
recover the wastes of the wilderness, and extend the bless- 
ings of religion and civilization, has ever been difficult. 
As it turned out, the coast that the English visited did 
not present towns, castles, cities for sitbjugation; but 
according to the terms, if the Cabots had found America 
teeming with a population as thick and as elevated in 
civilization as England itself, they would have been jus- 
tified in making the attempt, with fire and sword if 



COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 1 5 

necessaty, to bring the inhabitants under the EngHsh 
dominion. We all remember how, where there was a 
duly organized society, as in Mexico and Peru, the 
Spaniards felt themselves justified in reducing, at what- 
ever cost of cruelty, the whole aboriginal population. 

We find, however, that the Spaniards rested their 
right to possession and dominion on another plea. As 
you probably know, the Portuguese were, at the time of 
the discovery of America, much more of a maritime 
people than the Spaniards; for the internal struggles of 
Spain to secure unity for the kingdom, by the subjuga- 
tion of the Moors, had enlisted all the energy and the 
resources at the command of Ferdinand and Isabella. 
The Portuguese, meanwhile, were cultivating the spirit 
of discovery, and Columbus, before he approached the 
Spanish throne, had endeavored to make the king of 
Portugal his patron, by whom, however, he was rejected. 
In their enterprise at this time the Portuguese had, in 
the year i486, reached the Cape of Good Hope and dis- 
covered the way to India; a most valuable discovery, 
because it saved the necessity for the long, and dangerous 
route overland, by which, up to this time, India had been 
reached. 

It is easy to understand, then, how they must have been 
filled with alarm when news came of the success of 
Columbus in 1492, for in the ignorance of the whole nature 
of the land to the west, Columbus himself believing that 
he had reached the Indies by his western course, we can 
see how Portugal must have felt that the prize she had 
almost in her grasp was about to be lost. The only 
recourse in such a case was either to maintain their right 
by arms or else to appeal to the Pope, who had at this 



l6 * HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

time made himself arbiter of the nations, deciding in 
their affairs, often with a plenitude of authority which 
is to us of this day astonishing. 

In the year 1454 Pope Nicholas had granted to Por- 
tugal the empire of Guinea, with authority to subdue it, 
and at the same time he prohibited all persons from sail- 
ing thither without the permission of the Portuguese. 
Such a proposition belonged to that time, however 
extravagant it would appear now that any nation of Europe 
should seek the Pope's consent, either to secure a prov- 
ince in Africa or anywhere else, or having secured it, to 
defend it against all intruders. Such rights are now 
secured and defended in altogether another way. 

The claims of the Pope to such jurisdiction are fully 
set forth in his grant in 1493, after the return of Colum- 
bus, and when the conflict of jurisdiction was anticipated 
between Portugal and Spain. The grant runs thus : 

" Given at Rome, 7th of May, 1493. From our mo- 
tion, not moved thereto by your petition or that of any 
other in your behalf, but of our own mere liberality and 
certain knowledge, and the plenitude of Apostolic 
authority, we grant to you and your successors, Kings of 
Castile and Leon, all islands and continents, found and 
to be found, discovered and to be discovered, towards the 
west and south (drawing a line from one pole to the 
other at a hundred leagues west of the Azores) by the 
authority granted us in the blessed Peter, and by the 
vicarship of Jesus Christ which we discharge on earth, 
with all the dominion, states, etc., to the same belonging. 
And we constitute, ordain and appoint you, your heirs 
and successors, as aforesaid, lords of the same, with full, 
free and all manner of power, authority and jurisdiction." 



COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 1/ 

You see the nature of the authority claimed: as the 
successor of St. Peter and as the vicar of Jesus Christy 
to whom the earth belongs. This was what was meant 
then by the temporal power of the Pope. Everything 
discovered or to be discovered; it was a most magnifi- 
cent gift. All to the east was given to the Portuguese, 
but the American continent and islands were to belong to 
Spain. This most bountiful Pope was the celebrated 
Borgia, Alexandria VI, who is described as " the most 
infamous Pope that ever lived, and the most vicious 
prince of his age." 

This line of one hundred leagues, however, did not 
satisfy Portugal, and consequently a commission was 
appointed, of three members from each country, with 
plenipotentiary power, who carried the line two hundred 
and seventy leagues farther west, a most fortunate cir- 
cumstance for Portugal, as by accidental discovery in 
1499 Brazil fell to her lot, lying, as it did, within the 
lines given. 

How greatly have the laws of political economy 
changed since that day. Europe was just then emerging 
from feudalism, during the long prevalence of which 
human rights, and grace, mercy, gentleness, were almost 
unknown. Now, there are laws of nations and interna- 
tional amenities. Now, there is a public opinion among 
nations, and nations seek to justify themselves to the 
minds of other nations. "A decent respect for the 
opinions of mankind" enters into all great movements. 
Then men were in many instances only half-civilized, 
even in Christian lands, and some power like the Papal 
was very beneficial for ameliorating international rela- 
tions. The whole seems out of place now, because men 



1 8 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

are no longer half-civilized; but nations, resting upon 
more elevated notions of conduct, are frequently able to 
determine questions peaceably that in other days would 
have precipitated gigantic war. The Papal assumptions, 
however regarded at this day, were the growth and out- 
come of the circumstances of those earlier times. The 
misfortune was that the circumstances that gave occasion 
for the assumptions proved also the ruin of the papacy. 
Her achievement of good diminished as her opportunity 
for good increased. 

When the charter for the province of Maryland was 
given, attention had for some years been bestowed on the 
settlement of the Atlantic coast of North America. The 
French had secured foothold in Canada and established 
what was to all appearance a permanent settlement; for 
they were able to maintain their position until the close 
of the French war, which began in the year 1754. Other 
attempts had been made by them, but without success. 
Along with their settlement in Canada will be re- 
membered their immense claims in the valley of the 
Mississippi which were extinguished by purchase by the 
United States in 1803. Also they had attempted a settle- 
ment in Carolina and another in Florida after the middle 
of the sixteenth century, but both of these came to 
nothing, — that in Florida having been exterminated by the 
Spaniards, as they avowed, because of religious hatred. 
The Spaniards also settled St. Augustine in the year 
1565, though almost all their activity was confined to the 
region about the Gulf of Mexico and on the Pacific coast. 
Spain was exceedingly jealous of any nations making 
settlements in America, all of which she called her own 
by right of prior discovery and the gift of the Pope; 



COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. I9 

but by the treaty of Madrid in the year 1670 between 
England and Spain the territories of each were finally 
detennined. 

England herself, however, made various efforts at 
colonization before she finally succeeded. One attempt 
was made in 1583 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert on 
the island of Newfoundland, but failed, and the 
effort to colonize was for the time abandoned. Another 
was made, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth, by 
Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584 on Roanoke Island, but 
this also failed. Other attempts were made, but with 
no permanent results, till the charter granted by James 
the First to Sir Thomas Gates and others in the year 
1606. It is interesting to note how generous the king 
was, as the lands bestowed by this charter extended from 
the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth degrees of latitude, 
which cover the whole territory between Cape Fear and 
the southern border of North Carolina on the south and 
the northern boundary of Vermont. This was the origi- 
nal grant, though the king and his successors afterwards 
assumed the prerogative of giving lands and taking them 
back again to bestow on other favorites; and so this 
territory came to be divided up at last between various 
individuals. 

The Dutch, however, did not by any means feel dis- 
posed to accept the claimiS the English crown made of 
exclusive right to this part of North America, and so 
in 1609 they sent out an expedition, which, entering the 
Hudson river, took possession of the country and estab- 
lished a colony. They also made settlements on the 
Delaware. Afterwards, during the war in the reign of 
Charles the Second their settlements fell into the hands 



20 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

of the English. The Dutch again for a while recovered 
the territory, but finally in 1673 the whole became an 
English possession. Charles granted it to his brother 
James the Duke of York, from whom the name of the 
colony on the Hudson was derived. 

A part of the New York of that time was New Jersey. 
This James sold off as private property to various pri- 
vate gentlemen, who again, in their turn, sold it to others. 
I make this point because I want to emphasize what we 
would now regard as a very peculiar thing. The whole 
territory of the province of Maryland, say, was the private 
property of a private English gentleman, given to him, 
his heirs and assigns, an entailed estate, descending like 
any other from father to son. The people under the 
charter had certain privileges, and they had certain rights 
in the soil, theirs either by purchase or by gift of the 
proprietary. But by the charter all the land was given 
to the proprietor, and he might alienate it in whole or in 
parcels. The jurisdiction also, the powder to propose and 
to veto laws, the power to appoint the chief executive 
and other officers, also belonged to him, and descended 
from father to son. In the case of the Jerseys, even 
jurisdiction was alienated, that is, the proprietors sold out 
the right of governing, an analogous case to which was 
found in Maryland, where, in the failure of legal heirs, 
the province was conveyed by will to Henry Harford, the 
natural son of the former proprietor. As it was, the 
emoluments of the province of Maryland were so exten- 
sive that, while there was a legal heir, there was no desire 
to sell. Such a state of things, however natural they 
appeared in that day when feudal notions still lingered in 
the popular mind, seems strange and very unnatural to us. 



COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 21 

There is no country probably, even of Europe (except 
possibly Russia, whose condition is to us an anachronisn::), 
where the alienable proprietary government of a province 
would be now accepted as legitimate; yet in the colonial 
period of America, scarcely more than one hundred years 
ago, the thing seemed normal. 

According to the accepted principles of that day, all such 
foreign territory as was obtained by conquest belonged 
to the crown, and of his own free and independent will 
and pleasure the king bestowed it on whom he would. 
It was a figment of the law, and went back to the time 
when the strongest among a body of feudal lords would 
lead his followers into some new country, and having con- 
quered it, would parcel out the domain, either as a reward 
or to secure a following, to such of his knights and barons 
as he felt could be relied on. There had been no raising 
of an army, no leading of mailed legions in respect of 
America. At most there had been a few dollars spent 
on the equipment of a ship or two, and small ones at that, 
and that out of moneys obtained from the people; but 
all that was seen or imagined of the new country was 
declared to be the king's by conquest. And then he would 
give it to whom he would, with the right of jurisdiction 
to nominate or even to make laws, to appoint officers 
or to rule by oneself, to derive taxes and duties, as well 
as to sell the land to whom he would, and even, as we have 
seen, to transfer these prerogatives of sovereignty to some 
one else for a consideration, however unworthy that one 
might be, however unfitted for his office and duties, how- 
ever personally offensive to the people over whom he 
purchased the right to rule. 



22 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

To our minds it was a strange state of things, but for 
some time the strangeness was not recognized. All the 
time, also, the provincials were called English subjects, 
entitled to all the privileges and rights of Englishmen. 
From time immemorial an English subject had been pro- 
tected from the arbitrary rule of the sovereign by the 
Parliament, whose voice was necessary for the making 
of laws and for the imposition of taxes. But according to 
the royal notions in respect of parceling out the exten- 
sive foreign territory, Parliament had no voice at all. 
Everything was in the hands and power of the king. By 
his charters he prescribed what prerogatives should belong 
to the proprietary and what should be extended to the 
people, and in some instances, in royal colonies, an inde- 
pendent monarchical power was exercised by the gov- 
ernors, as in Virginia in 1618, when the deputy governor 
published a number of edicts as of his own supreme will. 
The fullness of his supremacy, as he understood it, is indi- 
cated by the character of the edicts, which were such as 
these: That merchandise should be sold at an advance 
of twenty-five in the hundred; that tobacco should be 
taken in payment of debts at three shillings a pound, 
under penalty of three years' servitude; that no one 
should privately traffic with the Indians, or teach them 
to use firearms, under pain of death to teacher and 
scholar; that no one should hunt deer or hogs without the 
governor's leave; that no one should shoot (except in 
necessary self-defense) till a new supply of ammunition 
should arrive, on pain of a year's personal service; that 
no one should go on board the ships at Jamestown with- 
out the governor's leave; that every one should go to 
church Sundays and holy days, on pain of penal service 



COLONIZATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 23 

during the following week; for second offense the pen- 
alty was the same penal service for a month, and for the 
third for a year and a day. 

This was prerogative of the direst kind, and of course 
such extreme presumption could last but a short time. 
The first James and the first Charles, however, had very 
extreme notions of prerogative; and in bestowing, of 
their free grace and bounty, immense territories on their 
favorites they had but little thought of the rights of the 
people. As late as 1638, Governor Harvey, of Virginia, 
exercised even tyrannical jurisdiction. 

Prerogative, however, was the rule of the day where- 
ever it could be exercised, and it will be seen how that, 
though Lord Baltimore's charter required the calling of 
assemblies of the people, yet the people themselves had 
to contend, in the beginning, against the assumption 
under the charter that the initiative of all laws should pro- 
ceed from the proprietar}^ They insisted that when a 
law was felt to be necessary they should have th-e power 
of passing it subject to the veto, and that they should 
not have to wait till the law was submitted by the pro- 
prietary for their consideration. You will all doubdess 
recollect that it was this very question of prerogative 
and the attempted exercise of it, that brought on in Eng- 
land the civil w^ar that ended with the death of the king 
and the overthrow of the monarchy. 

As regards the colonies, the parliament at last came to 
assert its right and to question and restrict the royal 
claims to exclusive jurisdiction. Parliamentary control 
was asserted over the colonies, laws of trade and shipping 
acts were passed, and later, in the times immediately pre- 
ceding the American Revolution, and leading to it, the 



24 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

stamp act and taxes on various articles were imposed, for 
the purpose of raising- a revenue for the weighty burdens 
of the home government. A charter was a law bestow- 
ing certain privileges and rights upon an English subject, 
and parliament came at last to deny to royal authority 
alone the power of enacting such a law. It would, doubt- 
less, never have been allowed had the value of the 
colonies been from the beginning understood; but the 
land lay so far away, the idea of revenue was so very 
remote, and so very few persons had any definite notions 
of what the colonies w^ere capable of becoming, that while 
prerogative in English affairs was reprobated, as applied 
to America it was a matter of indifference; and if ihe 
king chose to sport the kingly gift he could be left to his 
amusement. It was this to James the First, who among 
all the many occasions of showing his vanity, embraced 
this, and strove to prove himself an excellent statesman 
and lawmaker for the new communities he was fostering 
into life. 



SECOND LECTURE. 

Comparison of Charters. 

To-day we will consider the various colonial charters, 
comparing them with each other and with that of Mary- 
land. This will show out various fundamental character- 
istics of the times when these were given, and will 
also indicate a certain progress in thought and in the 
apprehension of civil and religious liberty; for the period 
from the first Virginia charter to that for Georgia extends 
over a good deal more than a hundred years, during 
which great questions were agitated, and the human mind 
was advancing towards a clearer sense of what consti- 
tuted human rights and liberty. 

These, as we have seen, were by royal gram, and all ran 
in the name of the king, on the ground that all such ter- 
ritories as were held by right of discovery, belonged to the 
king. Those to whom the charters were granted, how- 
ever, were compelled to be at their own charges in secur- 
ing their setdements, and as in the beginning the majority 
of those who were willing to leave their homes and 
the security of English life for the insecurity and 
exposure of the wilderness, as well as for the long and 
doubtful sea voyage, as it was then, were poor men, the 
expense to those sending them out was necessarily very 
great. For besides the charges of the outward voyage, 
cost of vessels, etc., provision had necessarily to be made 
for the support of the colony tmtil crops could be planted 



26 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

and matured, as well as for all the other incidental costs 
of building, clearing up lands, placating the natives. The 
expenses were very great, and the failure to meet them, 
and to make provision for the many necessary demands 
that must arise, was the cause of various failures among 
the early adventurers. 

Lord Baltimore, who had learned experience by his 
father's attempts in Newfoundland, and by his association 
with the Virginia Company, spent, we are told, forty 
thousand pounds sterling in getting his colony firmly and 
definitely started; a venture that very few would have 
felt themselves justified in making even if they had the 
ability. Colonization by the English was a new thing, 
and for its success required boldness as well as large 
resources. Besides, Lord Baltimore, being the sole 
grantee of the charter, was not hampered by a multitude 
of counsellors, among whom there will always be some 
doubtful and timid spirits, and some who, if not doubtful 
and timid, can always find some reason for questioning 
every proposition. Doubless one great cause why Mary- 
land and Pennsylvania succeeded so well, was that in 
each case one man was at the head of affairs, and so all 
rivalry and jealousy in the source of administration, were 
avoided. 

Again, the charters differed very greatly one from the 
other, not only in respect of whether they were granted 
to one person or many, but also radically as to character, 
and as to the prerogatives, greater or less, which were 
bestowed by them. There were charters creating royal 
colonies, for instance, in which the great power of over- 
sight was retained by the king. And even here, also, 
there was great difference; for while in some instances, 



COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 2/ 

as later in Virginia, and when Maryland was for a while 
withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Lords Baltimore, 
the governor was appointed by the king and held only 
of the king; in other cases, as in the first charters of Vir- 
ginia, the council (to which the regulation of affairs in 
the colony was entrusted, and which could itself be ap- 
pointed and removed by the king) had the power of 
appointing the governor and other officers. Of these 
councils for Virginia there were two, — one in England 
and the other in the colony; and according to the charter, 
" the laws, ordinances and instructions " that were to 
guide them, were to be such as shall in that behalf be 
given and signed by the king's hand and sign-manual, 
and pass under the privy seal of the realm of England. 

Again, also, in a royal colony all laws passed by the 
colonial assembly (for such a body came soon to be 
recognized as essential in every colony) were transmitted 
to the king for his approval; while in other cases, as 
in the proprietary government of Maryland, the king 
was not known, but the right to confimi or veto was in 
the proprietor. In the year 1620 a new charter was 
granted for New England, as it came now to be called, 
which w^as conferred upon "the council established at 
Plymouth for the planting, ruling, ordering, and govern- 
ing of New England; according to which the council was 
to make and revoke governors, officers and ministers, 
also to make, ordain, establish all manner of orders, laws, 
directions, instructions, forms, ceremonies of government 
of said colony, only that the same be not contrary to 
the laws and statutes of this our realm of England." The 
governor was also empowered to exercise martial law 
upon emergency. 



28 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

When, however, the Brownists, coming from Hol- 
land, settled at New Plymouth in 1620, they did so with- 
out a charter, — squatters, as they would be defined in 
these days, — and consequently were able to enjoy in a 
very high degree self-government, electing their officers, 
passing their own laws, regulating their own affairs. 
Later on, when they had grown to power, and were 
often disposed to show towards the government at home 
the independence that made up so large a part of their 
character, their power was restricted, governors were sent 
from England, and they were watched with a jealous eye. 
Such royal control was also exercised over the other New 
England colonies. This was, however, only in the 
reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second; for 
during the civil war and the commonwealth, which covered 
so large a part of the earlier period of the colonies, the 
New England colonies were too much in sympathy with 
the parliamentary cause to apprehend any restriction of 
privileges. 

The proprietary colonies differed from the royal in 
this, that the whole territory was passed over by the 
king to one or more individuals, the only recognition of 
the royal right reserved being a nominal rent; as, for 
instance, in the case of Avalon, a white horse, whenever 
the king should demand it in person within the prov- 
ince; which was in every sense nominal, — a king of 
England visiting the cold shores of Newfoundland 
being hardly conceivable as a possibility. In the charter 
of Maryland the recognition of the king's right was the 
presentation of two arrow-heads, to be delivered at 
Windsor annually. In the beginning, at any rate, Lord 
Baltimore was careful to make this delivery, as the 



COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 2g 

receipts among his papers show. A notable case of this 
kind of colony was that of the Carolinas, given by 
Charles the Second in the year 1663 to various courtiers. 
This territory was made a province by the fifth clause 
of the charter, and the consideration was the more sub- 
stantial but insignificant payment of twenty marks lawful 
money. In Georgia, hov/ever, whose charter was be- 
stowed in 1732, the king required that four shillings 
be paid him and his successors for every hundred acres 
settled, the payment to commence ten years after the 
establishment of the colony. According to all the char- 
ters, however, the king reserved to himself a certain 
pordon, one-fourth or one-fifth, of the gold and silver 
ore found in the colony. This was also the case, as you 
will recollect, in the Spanish colonies; for the planting 
of colonies always filled the mind of the royal giver 
with expectations of filling his empty coffers, for kingly 
coffers were as apt to get empty as those of other people. 
In die case of the Spaniards, as we know, that hope was 
attained in a marvelous degree. The same cannot be 
said of the English colonies, though they did something 
infinitely better: they developed, both in themselves and 
in England, a commercial activity and enterprise that 
stimulated the best energies of human nature, by which 
they became able to reap rich harvests of gold from all 
the earth. 

These proprietary charters were very much alike, 
though when the time came to make some of the later 
ones the grants w^ere not so generous as they had been 
before their value was fully understood. When we 
reach Lord Baltimore's charter we can analyze, and in 
that way understand more fully, the meaning of the name 



30 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND, 

given them. All that need be dwelt upon at this point 
is the distinction between the royal and proprietary colo- 
nies; in the former, as we have seen, the king retaining 
within his prerogative a large amount of direction and 
jurisdiction, while in the latter the proprietary is tlie 
highest offtcer. King James, for instance, when he 
granted the charter to the two Virginia companies, him- 
self prepared a whole body of laws and transmitted them, 
while the proprietaries could either submit laws to the 
Assembly of the people for their approval, or could 
establish a law w^ien it had passed the Assembly. In 
the case of Pennsylvania, in 1681, this proprietary pre- 
rogative was farther limited by the requirement that all 
laws should be submitted within four years to the Eng- 
lish Privy Council. 

The charters also provided for em.ergencies by giving 
to the proprietaries, by themselves or their executive 
officers, from time to time to make and ordain fit and 
wholesome orders and ordinances, which ordinances " w^e 
do by these presents straightly charge and command to 
be inviolably observed within the province, under the 
penalties therein expressed, so that such ordinances be 
reasonable and not repugnant to the laws and statutes 
of the Kingdom of England." It is to be observed 
here that the writ of Habeas Corpus, by which personal 
safety is secured to every one against arbitrary arrest, 
was not extended to the colonies till the reign of Queen 
Anne. Possibly the constitutional principle had been 
recognized all the way along, as it had been in England 
since the day of Magna Charta. The act, however, of 
the thirty-first year of Charles the Second, which gave 
the principle definite form and substance, was not ex- 



' COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 3 1 

tended to the colonies till the time given. No better 
protection has ever been devised for the citizen than the 
law extending this right of investigation; for under it 
any one could demand to know the reasons of his arrest, 
with such an amount of preliminary investigation as to' 
show reasonable ground for suspicion and indictment. 

The reason why Charles the Second, in granting the 
charter to William Penn, limited his prerogative by re- 
serving to the Privy Council the right of reviewing all 
laws passed in the colony, was that after his restoration 
m^ 1660 New England had indicated an independent 
spirit, and the claim of a right to control her own affairs, 
which could not but gall one who felt that all the domain 
of America belonged to him, and was held only by his 
grace and that of his fathers. In fact, there was always 
present in the colonies a certain conflict between two 
great and powerful principles, the one being the absolute 
power of the king, the other the freedom of the subject 
This was a conflict that had begun definitely in En-land 
during the reign of Elizabeth, or rather was definitely 
renewed in her day. For it had begun and been to 
some degree settled in the fourteenth century; only the 
long and terrible wars between the houses of York and 
Lancaster, that desolated the land and reduced the 
strength of the nobles and the people, had prepared the 
way for the absolute power that was exercised during the 
reigns of Henry the Seventh and his immediate suc- 
cessors.. 

By the days of Elizabeth, however, the people had 
recovered some of their old prosperity, and, with it 
their spirit; not the nobility, but the people, for feudal- 
ism was practically dead, and power had passed into the 



32 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

hands of the ' people. These principles were in conflict 
all along through the colonial period, and as they had 
brought about the Great l^ebellion in England, so there 
was a constant protest in the colonies, a protest that 
grew more and more pronoimced, until the long struggle 
ended in, as it had trained the colonies for, national 
independence. Even in the charter of New York, 
granted to the Puke of York, afterwards James the 
Second, by his brother Charles, we find the jealousy of 
colonial independence manifested, for in some respects 
the duke's privileges were inferior even to those granted 
to other proprietaries. 

There are certain things common to many of the 
charters which it would be well for us to remember, 
among them the privilege of removal granted to those 
who desired to go into the colonies. We are so accus- 
tomed to the right of changing our abode, going to any 
foreign land, or to any part of our own land, that we 
cannot understand readily the denial or limitation of this 
right as it existed in the days when charters were given. 
For among the privileges granted by these is this, that 
persons so desiring should be free to go over to the colo- 
nies to make their homes there. And this was because 
of an old law of the reign of Elizabeth, according to 
which "if any subject or denizen shall depart the realm 
without license under the great seal, he shall forfeit his 
personal estate and lose the profits of his land during his 
life." The liberty granted, therefore, was very necessary, 
being only a relaxation of the law in behalf of the colo- 
nies. Even within the kingdom itself free passage was 
not allowed from place to place, but license had to be 
obtained. Thousfh all of this survives in some parts 



COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 33 

of Europe to-day, most notably in Russia, where every 
one belongs to some commune, to which he may be re- 
turned wherever he may be found within any part of 
the great empire. 

This restriction of personal freedom was seen in a 
most oppressive form in the charter of Virginia in the 
year 1612, one clause of which was that certain persons 
having returned from Virginia and given an evil report of 
the condition of things there, the king granted power to 
the home council " to apprehend and bind over with 
good sureties, or else to remand and send back the said 
offenders to the said colony of Virginia, there to be pro- 
ceeded against and punished as governor, deputy, or 
council there, for the time being, shall think meet." We 
should think it a strange thing if any one coming back 
from our western country, or from Alaska, and bringing 
a report of disappointment and distress, should be ar- 
rested and bound over to keep silent, or else be sent back 
again, to be dealt with by those who had every private 
and selfish reason for making the world believe that all 
was encouraging. But private rights, as we know them, 
were not known in 161 2. 

Another privilege granted, which is also common to 
the charters, is that of transmitting goods into the colo- 
nies and of shipping from the colonies any productions. 
But this latter was subject to conditions. For it was a 
universal law that the home country possessed the mo- 
nopoly of the trade of the colonies, and no ships of other 
nations were allowed to trade directly with them. And 
nothing was watched more jealously than this. Goods 
from the colonies did reach other countries, but they 
had first to be shipped to England, Scotland or Ireland, 



34 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

and then afterwards to h& reshipped to any other port. 
By this means the Enghsh agents of the colonists reaped 
a heavy commission, and the necessity arose that all 
goods from whatever country should first pass through 
the hands of British or Irish merchants. It will be remem- 
bered how Massachusetts repudiated this right of Eng- 
lish interference with her trade, and by all possible and 
sometimes absurd excuses, sought to extenuate her no- 
torious violations of the law. For Massachusetts was 
always at the forefront of protest against British preten- 
sions. 

In the matter of the legislative power of the people, 
and their right to determine what laws should bind them, 
we find a good deal of interest, from the fact that the 
Stuart kings by no means looked upon the exercise of 
this right by the people with pleasure, and called their 
representatives together in parliament as seldom as their 
own needs w^ould allow. For at that day it was different 
from what it is now, for the people did not govern the 
realm, but only came together to assist the king to do 
it, whenever he called them, and this was only so often as 
he needed money, which he could not get without them. 
It will be remembered that it was King Charles' effort to 
get money without the people's consent that aroused 
Hampden, and with Hampden the whole English world, 
and precipitated the civil war, and overthrew the mon- 
archy, and compassed the death of the king. 

But in the colonial charters provision soon came to 
be made for the assembling of the people or their repre- 
sentatives, and the requirement that no law should be of 
force without their consent. In the first grant to the 
Virginia Company no such provision was made. The 



COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 35 

king made the laws and the council provided for the 
government under them. In 1621, however, two houses 
of assembly were created in Virginia— one appointed by 
the treasurer and council of the Company, the other 
composed of the governor, local council and two bur- 
gesses to be chosen by the inhabitants of any town, hun- 
dred or settlement. The governor was to have a veto 
of the laws passed; while also, accepted by him, they had 
to be further approved and confirmed by the general 
court in England. Again, however, it was provided that 
no order of the general court could bind the colony till 
It was assented to by the colonial assembly. 

Provision for such assembly by the charters became 
the rule from that time out. The charter for Avalon, 
for instance, granted to Lord Baltimore in 1623, before 
he changed his religion and ceased to be Secretary of 
State, provided that the freeholders were to be assembled 
for the making of laws for the province, the condition 
given being that the laws should not be repugnant or 
contrary, but as near as conveniently may be, agreeable 
to the laws and statutes of England. Lord Baltimore, 
who was one of the most astute and observant men of his 
day, saw the necessity, and had the provision incorpor- 
ated. And again, when his second charter was given, 
that^ for Maryland, the same clause was inserted. How 
far it was only policy and how far it was the fruit of a 
broad and liberal spirit, we do not know. We only 
know that when the colony had been planted, and its 
administration became a practical problem, his son, on 
whom the world has been delighted to lavish its praise, 
attempted so far to limit the privilege of the assembly as 
to claim the sole initiative in the making of laws. This 



36 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

the people rejected, however, and proceeded to consider 
the laws as of their own suggestion, a claim and pre- 
rogative which his lordship was afterwards constrained 
to allow. The right of initiative was recognized as be- 
longing to both parties equally. Before a law couLd 
become finally and completely part of the code of the 
province it had not only to pass the assembly in both its 
houses, but also to receive the approval of the governor 
in the colony and afterwards of the proprietary. It went 
into effect, however, upon its approval by the governor, 
so that sometimes the anomaly was seen that a law was 
in force and business carried on in the colony under it, 
when in fact it was no law and was finally rejected by the 
proprietor. There was of necessity a good deal of de 
facto and not de jiire government under such circum- 
stances. 

Another notable peculiarity to be observed, is the 
reference made to extending the Christian religion, as 
being one of the purposes of sending out the colony, — 
"Enlarging the extent of the Christian world," as the 
charter of Avalon has it. Also the charter of Massa- 
chusetts Bay of 1629 declares that converting the natives 
is the principal end of the royal intention and of the 
adventurers' free profession in the establishment of the 
plantation. The charter for Maryland also contained 
the same. How far such clauses are to be pushed, is 
questionable, though we do know that whatever may 
have been the intention either of the grantor or of the 
grantee under the charter, efforts were made by godly, 
earnest men to carry the word of God to the inhabitants 
of the wilderness. The bitter spirit that was excited in 
the Indians soon hindered in many places the zeal of the 



COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 37 

missionaries, a bitterness created by the injustice and 
brutality with which they were treated; yet to the very 
utmost of their power, often preceding the trader and the 
explorer, devoted men pursued their purpose even to 
remote districts. This was the case not only in the 
English colonies, but also in Canada, the account of their 
efforts often reading more like a romance than like sober 
and sometimes painful reality. The account we have 
from Father Andrew White of his own work and that 
of his colleagues in Maryland, cannot but fill us with 
admiration for the single-mindedness and purity of in- 
tention of his earnest soul. 

Another point of interest is the taxation of the people. 
The colonies were subjected to various custom charges, 
port dues, etc., from which there was no appeal. In the 
case of the Carolina charter of 1663 free trade was 
allowed with England, Scotland and Ireland for seven 
years, after which customs and dues were to be paid; but 
in the earlier charters there were no charges for ship- 
ments to England, but only when the same goods were 
reshipped to some foreign port, when they had to pay the 
same duties as were paid upon any other goods. A 
singular exemption was allowed by the charter for Avalon, 
as the products of the colony were to be relieved even 
of this burden for a period of ten years; but upon per- 
son, goods, chattels, tenements, lands, no taxes could 
be levied save by and with the consent of the repre- 
sentatives of the people. The king relinquished any 
right he thought himself possessed of, and he provided 
by the charters that the proprietaries should not exercise 
any such right It certainly promoted the peace of the 
colonies that that was fixed and determined, for there 



38 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

was none of the proprietaries that was not soon made to 
feel that the people knew and were determined to exer- 
cise, all the rights and privileges of English citizens and 
subjects. 

The question of religion, also, as it is suggested by 
the various charters, may very well be touched upon 
here. I have spo^ien of the claim that the grantees 
were influenced by a desire to extend the blessings of the 
Christian religion to the Indians. But I refer in this 
place to the regulations concerning religion that were 
contained in the charters, the assurance and limitation 
of privileges, as bearing upon the residents of the prov- 
ince. This was a matter of the first concern, for one of 
the most powerful causes for impelling men to leave their 
homes and seek a retreat in the colonies was the de- 
sire to enjoy freedom of conscience and of worship. 

The Virginia colony was from the beginning under 
Church of England influences, and we have seen how, 
with a high hand, the deputy governor, in 161 8, issued 
his injunctions that every one should go to church on 
Sundays and holy days, and that the penalty of refusing 
to do so was compulsory labor. The church was part 
and parcel of the very existence of things, church and 
state being so close together that no defining line could 
be drawn between them. In the charter granted to Sir 
Geo. Calvert for Avalon, which was before he changed 
his religion, there was given him the advowson of all 
churches to be erected in the province; that is, the right 
to appoint ministers, it being of the very sentiment of 
England that churches should be built, and that the 
patronage or right of appointment should be vested in 
some individual. 



COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 39 

In England various persons have this right; sometimes 
official as where the Lord Chancellor has many churches 
in his gift; or the faculty of the learned colleges; or 
some of the church dignitaries, as the Bishops; or private 
individuals, as when a church has been built upon a 
private estate. And so when a title to the province was 
given to Calvert, both as proprietor of the soil and as 
possessing civil jurisdiction, this privilege was granted. 

And so again in the charter for Maryland in 1632 we 
find the same. At this time Calvert had become Baron 
of Baltimore, and had avowed his conversion to the 
Roman religion. The fourth clause confers upon him 
the patronage and advowson of all the churches, together 
with license and faculty to build churches and to cause 
them to be dedicated and consecrated according to the 
ecclesiastical laws of the kingdom of England. Though 
Lord Baltimore had declared himself a Roman Catholic, 
the charter refused to recognize the fact, and treated him 
and insisted on his acting as a member of the estab- 
lished Church of England. It is true he never built 
churches or chapels, and none therefore were conse- 
crated, and the function of patronage was never exer- 
cised. It was about the only one of the privileges of 
his charter that he did not exercise. It brought him no 
emolument, it might have been an expense to him, and 
it may have been against his conscience. Certain it is 
that the failure to make such provision for the great 
Protestant majority of his people, proved to him a great 
misfortune, as it was one of the chief causes of his loss 
of the administration of the province in the Protestant 
revolution, and with it a large part of his revenue that 
arose from the civil administration. Accepting the char- 



40 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

ter with the fourth clause, he was bound not to neglect 
the spiritual needs of the people and not to appropriate 
all the revenues to his private use. Here let me observe 
that in speaking of Lord Baltimore I proceed upon the 
principle that "The king is dead, long live the king." 
When it is necessary to distinguish between the different 
individuals that bore the title I shall do so. 

The charter of the Carolinas, granted in 1663, con- 
tained the same clause providing for the patronage of the 
churches and their dedication. In the charter for Penn- 
sylvania, however, we find a difference; for in that there 
is a recognition that the grantee, Penn, was not of the 
faith of the Church of England ; for the right was secured 
to any persons to the number of twenty, to petition the 
Bishop of London to send a minister to them, and he 
was to be such a one as the Bishop would approve, the 
king evidently fearing that Penn was not of a sufficiently 
tolerant spirit to induce him to extend the liberty of 
worship to all. The right of petition was to be exer- 
cised irrespective of the will or pleasure of Penn. 

A strong contrast is presented between the religious 
spirit of New England and that of Georgia, suggesting 
the progress that had been made between the year 1620 
and 1732; for while in New England the spirit of the 
time showed itself in repressing, as far as possible, re- 
ligious liberty, and in the endeavor to hold state and 
church within the bonds of a narrow denominationalism, — 
the spirit of the times, I say, because then a persecuting 
spirit was abroad in almost the whole world, — in Georgia 
there was, from its foundation, a spirit of broader liberty, 
freedom of conscience to all, and the right of public 
worship to all except the Roman Catholics; who were 



COMPARISON OF CHARTERS. 4I 

dreaded and repressed more for what were regarded as 
their dangerous poHtical heresies than their erroneous 
rehgious creed. It took many years for Protestant Eng- 
land to become so conscious of her own power that she 
could despise and ignore those heresies. 



THIRD LECTURE. 

Lord Baltimore and the Maryland Charter. 

Modern nations, like ancient ones, cultivate as far as 
possible the memory of their founders and of those who 
in the earlier days of their existence, glorified the state 
either, by their virtue, their wisdom or their deeds. The 
ancient nations, it is true, losing the due balance be- 
tween God and man, worshiped often these ancient 
heroes, exalting them to a second place among the di- 
vinities and paying them all reverence. And the great 
deeds and wise words of those who lived in the histori- 
cal period were likewise handed on, by poet as well as his- 
torian, a halo gathered about them, glorifying what, may 
be, thousands of men in their own time would have said 
or done. Modern nations, it is true, do not so glorify their 
founders, there is no hero-worship; still every nation is 
proud of being able to point out illustrious men among 
the fathers of the state, or those who by wisdom and de- 
votion, have promoted its welfare and honor. England 
has her Alfred of earlier days, her Henry the Fifth, her 
William Pitt; France has her Charlemagne, her Louis 
the Pious, her First Napoleon. America has not only 
her Washington, but the whole galaxy of wisdom and de- 
votion that vindicated the manhood of the nation by the 
Declaration of Independence. Many of the separate 
States have their champions, men that guided the course 
of events in the earlier days or in the periods nearer our 
own. 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 43 

And well it is for nations that it should be so, for 
such commemoration of the illustrious departed keeps 
alive the national love of the institutions of the State, 
makes men jealous of everything that can tarnish the 
honor or destroy the integrity of the State. Patriotism 
is something that has to be fostered. It may spring up 
spontaneously in the himian heart, but unless it is culti- 
vated, by keeping alive the memory of the honorable 
if not heroic past, it will die, choked out by the weeds 
of selfishness and self-indulgence, greed and ambition. 
There may be, even without patriotism, enough of 
courage preserved to call forth the efforts for the de- 
fense of the country; but patriotism, — the love of country, 
that fosters some of the highest virtues of the human 
heart, and without which a nation is on the decline 
of the plane that leads to hopeless disaster, — patriotism 
can only be kept alive by a recollection of the country's 
heroic antecedents, and of those who in the country's 
behalf pledged their lives and their sacred honor in its 
cause. 

Now among the separate States of the Union that have 
and glory in a notable past, is Maryland. Somehow she 
has never made as much of her inheritance as some other 
States have, though in recent years she has become 
more zealous in searching into her records and present- 
ing them, to the world. I presume that one cause of 
her apathy in other days was that hers was a mixed 
community ; that being a Border State, a very large portion 
of her people were not native, but came here chiefly for 
the sake of the many advantages which the State offered 
in its soil and location, for commercial and manufac- 
turing enterprises. When the second volume of a most 



44 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

excellent history never saw the light, because the first, 
on which the author had bestowed so much and such 
conscientious care and labor, the most worthy mxOnument 
yet erected of the period it covered, was received with 
so little interest, — I speak of McMahon's history of Mary- 
land, — when such was the fact, it shows at how low an 
ebb was the sentiment in Maryland in behalf of the 
honor of Maryland. There is a different state of things 
now, I grant, but it is altogether questionable how far 
the sentiment extends. It is one purpose of these lec- 
tures to endeavor to develop in the young men of Mary- 
land a pride and love of the honorable old State. 

Upon going back to the first days of the colony we 
find two men standing out in strong prominence, father 
and son, George and Cecilius Calvert, first and second 
Lords Baltimore. The common name. Lord Baltimore, 
seems to have caused a good deal of confusion, for Lord 
Baltimore has often been referred to as if the whole 
early history of the colony had been controlled and 
directed by one man; whereas, as regards the offices of 
father and son, they are as dififerent as the lives and 
times of two men could possibly make them. 

Of the first of these, the father, George Calvert, first 
Lord Baltimore, there is very little that can be said, and 
that little is neither good nor bad. For we do not know 
enough of the man, his thoughts, feelings, purposes, to 
give any very distinct portraiture of him. He was a 
loving husband and an enterprising man, and as a poli- 
tician he was fairly consistent in his principles. But 
such things can probably be said of the largest part of 
the human family. Bom about 1580, he in early man- 
hood entered political life, filling various offices, includ- 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 45 

ing that of principal Secretary of State and membership 
of the Privy Council. James the First honored him 
with many proofs of his confidence, which he attempted 
to justify, not only by a faithful performance of his various 
duties, but by standing forth as the advocate of the 
king's claims when questioned by parliament or people. 
George Calvert was a courtier in the strictest sense of the 
v/ord, and was always as near the king as the king's 
favor could bring him. And doubtless he was fitted to 
be there, as a gentleman of education and excellent 
intelligence. 

At the same time he was always providing for him- 
self, but in an honorable way. Had there been any means 
of imputing evil conduct to him, doubtless it would have 
been done. For he was not a favorite with the weak king's 
favorite, and could he have been deprived of the king's 
favor, to get him out of the way, doubtless it would have 
been done. 

But such qualities never make a hero, and George 
Lord Baltimore was not a hero. He had alvays an eye 
to business, so that there was hardly a foreign enterprise 
prosecuted in which he had not an interest, colonization 
being a specialty with him. He was one of the original 
associates of the Virginia Company, and continued so 
till 1620. In 1609 and 1614 he put money in the East 
India Company. In 1622 he was a member of the New 
England Company. In 1620 he bought an extensive 
plantation in Newfoundland, and in 1623 he secured a 
charter for this, creating it a province, and giving him 
almost roval honors and prerogatives. Avalon, how- 
ever, failing him in his expectations, he secured from 
King Charles the gift of a section of Virginia, extending 



46 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

also into North Carolina, and called Carolana; but find- 
ing he would have trouble in securing the actual pos- 
session he relinquished it. And then in the year 1632 
we find him obtaining the province of Maryland, though 
dying before the gift was finally completed. Also in 
the year 1621 the king granted him twenty-three hundred 
acres of land in I^-eland, which he endeavored to colonize. 
All these transactions indicate that he was a man of 
great enterprise and business intelligence, and judging 
from the amounts he and his son claimed to have spent 
upon Avalon and Maryland, about forty-six thousand 
pounds sterling, he must have been very successful in 
the various enterprises in which he was interested. 

But all these things do not make a hero. Sometimes 
it is claimed he sought to establish a colony in Maryland 
as a refuge for the members of his church and religious 
faith who were denied freedom of religious worship in 
their own country; that that was the purpose he had in 
view. And the attempt has been made on this account 
to glorify him and to lift him up above the narrow views 
and unworthy contentions that belittled the whole 
religious mind of that day. But for over twenty years 
right along, from the foundation of the second Virginia 
Company in 1609, he had been engaged in this very 
business of colonization. Also in 1620 he bought 
estates, as we have seen, for which he secured a patent 
in 1623, a year and more before he avowed any change 
in religion, and yet the charters of both are nearly iden- 
tical, evidently drawn by the same hand, and that probably 
his own. He was a great speculator on a large scale; 
Virginia, New England, India, Newfoundland, Carolana, 
and Marvland, as well as Ireland, being the fields of 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 47 

his operations. But he was wiser or more fortunate 
than some speculators, because, though he did not Hve 
to reap the fruits of his ventures, his children and his 
heirs did; for their patrimony in Maryland proved a 
splendid source of revenue. George Calvert was not of 
the stuff out of which heroes are made. 

As to his change of religious views, we are sometimes 
told that he made it at a great sacrifice. But I do not 
suppose that any one would be more disposed to smile 
at such an assertion than Calvert himself. No one 
questions his sincerity, for it required great sincerity to 
avow a change of religion from that of the established 
to that of the Roman faith, which was then so severely 
under the popular ban. Politics ran high, and religion 
. was part of the national sentiment. Politics and religion 
were inseparably united, not only because religion was 
established, but because of the claims which on both 
the royal and Roman Catholic sides, the rulers put forth. 
The kings of England, for instance, claimed supremacy 
in religious matters, and in the king and parliament was 
the power of passing laws for the government of the 
church. The great dignitaries of the church also were 
appointed by the king, while in the House of Lords, 
at that time far more influential than now as a consti- 
tuent body of the realm, the Bishops had their place. 
It is well known how the royal and state authority in 
religion passed down all the way through all the ranks 
of the people. 

On the other hand, we know what were the claims 
of the Pope, — to unmake kings, to absolve their people 
from their allegiance, to possess supreme jurisdiction 
everywhere. And these contrary claims caused in Eng- 



48 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

land the most violent contentions, so that the minority 
were placed severely under the ban, and every one 
professing the unpopular religion, was declared incapable 
of holding any ofhce. The oaths of office were so 
searching that no Roman Catholic could, without de- 
liberate perjury, take them. 

When, therefore, George Lord Baltimore avowed in 
1624 his change of faith from that of the established 
church, he proved his sincerity. When he changed his 
creed he ran great risk of personal loss. How long 
before his avowal he had changed we do not know. We 
only know he chose a very opportune time for the 
avowal; for his popularity with the king had for some 
time been very much diminished, because the Duke of 
Buckingham had found Lord Baltimore standing in the 
way of his political schemes, chiefly the proposed French 
marriage for the Prince of Wales; and what the duke 
abhorred the king rejected. Now, however, both the 
duke and the king had turned a favoring look upon him, 
and at that moment, while the skies were propitious, the 
avowal was made, with the result that, unlike his prede- 
cessor in the same office, he was allowed to sell out his 
secretaryship for six thousand pounds sterling, he had the 
lordship conferred upon him, becoming Baron of Balti- 
more in Ireland, his fine estate in Ireland of twenty- 
three hundred acres was renewed to him, the oath of 
supremacy being waived, and he continued in possession 
of Avalon. His change of religion therefore cost him 
nothing, but was probably one of the most successful 
ventures he ever made; for beside the immediate emolu- 
ment it brought him, it set him free to pursue those 
plans of empire beyond the sea on which his mind had 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 49 

for years been set, and from which he hoped and his 
heirs derived, such large reward. 

When, however, we turn to CeciUus Calvert we find 
one whose wisdom was shown to be great by his found- 
ing and administration of, the province of Maryland. 
The foundation of Maryland was made in troublous 
times, when both the religious and political currents 
were running wildly through all English life, and not 
only in England, but on the Continent as well. You 
will recollect that at this time the Thirty Years' War was 
going on, having begun in 1618, a war that involved all 
Europe, and in which not only religious antagonisms 
existed, but political ambition as well. For while the 
war began as a reaction from the Reformation of the 
century before, yet soon the questions of territory, the 
seizing upon the spoils of war, entered in, and in the 
course of it all Europe was devastated. The connec- 
tion between the kingdoms on the Continent and Eng- 
land was not as immediate and as sensitive then as now, 
yet not only for political and religious reasons was the 
feeling of the English people aroused, but also for family 
reasons, the daughter of James the First being the wife 
cf Elector Palatine, the elected king of Bohemia, who 
was one of the chief victims and sufferers of the war. 

The times were troubled also in England, for it was 
during this period that the people of England began 
to assert strongly the rights of English freemen as against 
the claims of royal prerogative and arbitrary government. 
The contest began back in Queen Elizabeth's day, the 
Commons from time to time indicating their will in such 
a way that the queen saw it was wisdom to acquiesce. 
But in the days of James, for whom as a Scotchman 



50 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

and a foreigner the people had no hereditary love, and 
who had no shining qualities to constrain their admira- 
tion or forbearance, the voice of the people became 
more distinct and emphatic. And when Charles the 
First came to the throne in 1625 the position was as 
advanced as the voice was pronounced and clear. As 
I am not writing English history, however, I must not 
go into detail. Only you will recollect that, after con- 
tentions in parliament and then a long cessation of par- 
liament, the king attempting to rule without it, and the 
attempt also by the king to provide for the public neces- 
sities by the seizure of private property without the 
sanction of law, and then the calling of the Long Parlia- 
ment which would not be dissolved, — you will recollect, 
I say, that after all this came the civil war, and the 
beheading of the king in the beginning of the year 1649. 
The times were troubled. 

Along with the religious agitation of the time there 
was the religious as well, for religion and politics were 
strongly blended. Through generations there had been 
scarcely a distinction between them. The king had 
been at the head of the church in temporal things, and 
the ministers of the church, especially the Bishops, had 
filled many ofilices in the temporal administration of the 
kingdom. And this was the case, not only in England, 
but e;very where. Beside this, religious malignity was 
shown, owing to certain claims to political and temporal 
power which were put forth in the name of religion; so 
that the agitation went on everywhere and involved the 
strongest emotions. 

Now it was in the midst of such commotions as these 
that Cecilius, the second Lord Baltimore, began and 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 5 1 

prosecuted his enterprise. His father had died in 1632, 
having before his death secured the promise of the grant 
of Maryland. The report is the king only hesitated to 
grant it from a desire to retain Lord Baltimore near 
himself, having need of the services of a tried and expe- 
rienced statesman and diplomatist. To prosecute the 
enterprise required all the wisdom of which a man might 
seem capable. He was of the unpopular side in religion, 
around every member of which there existed the sus- 
picion that he was a traitor and capable of betraying the 
state. His father had been a convert, and probably he 
also, for we do not know enough concerning the inner 
life of the family to know when or why they changed 
their faith. There is contemporary evidence to show 
that there was a good deal of apparent vacillation in the 
father before his convictions became established. As 
early as 1620 he was suspected to be "popishly affected," 
and by others it was supposed he had always been 
inclined that way. One contemporary writer states that 
he had three different times avowed his change of faith. 
Probably, however, it was only his association with the 
proposed Spanish match, which he earnestly championed, 
that caused such imputations. But converts, we know, 
excite more suspicion and enmity than those bom to 
the faith. The father and consequently the whole family, 
were associated with the court, and so had become iden- 
tified in the minds of the people with the extreme, 
arbitrary views of the king and court, identification jus- 
tified by the whole course of the father while he was in 
oflfice. ' ' 

And yet though these were his circumstances, and he 
but twenty-six years old when the inheritance fell to him, 



JUN 11 1908 




52 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

we find Cecilius conducting his affairs with a good 
judgment and wise policy that brought him through 
every trouble and enabled him to hold his own, or if 
for a while deprived of it by the temporary success of 
his enemies, to recover it again and hand it on to his 
successor, a strong, vigorous, growing, wealthy colony. 
Such skill and such success demonstrate the man. 
When also we remember that it was not only troubles 
without, but troubles within, that he had a mixed multi- 
tude to govern as well as to conciliate, a multitude com- 
posed of all classes and conditions of life, in part the 
high-toned and spirited, jealous of individual rights and 
dignity, and in part the very refuse of England, with those 
of every intervening condition; when we remember also 
that he had the members of his own church to restrain, 
lest they should succeed in their claims, which would 
have crushed down his own rights, as well as excited 
tumult among the colonists; when we remember the 
bigotry of the same class of refugees who had set Eng- 
land on fire, and who now settled in Maryland, having 
been expelled from Virginia, and who had to inflame 
them the sense that they were martyrs for their faith, 
that they held the truth and no one else did, and that 
the Lord had blessed their cause in England by the over- 
throw of all their enemies, — when we remember all this, 
and yet see how successfully he conducted his whole 
administration through forty-three years, we cannot but 
be struck with the wisdom of the man. 

All the glory belongs to him and not to his father. 
He was a man of eminent policy if not of wisdom. 
Though never a friend to the people of England, but 
only a useful member of the court, he pursued his way 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 53 

SO cleverly that when the evil day came and the favor 
of the court was so far withdrawn that he had no reason 
to foster further hopes, he was able to retire well laden 
with both the honors and the substantial rewards of ser- 
vice, a very wealthy man. To Cecilius belongs all the 
honor of the successful administration of Maryland. 
What may have been his motives is one thing, and we 
may not judge of other men's motives, but of his actions 
we may judge. His administration may have been one 
of policy and a shrewd recognition of the necessities 
of his position, or it may have been the genius of the 
high-toned statesman. Either thing could have deter- 
mined his course in the way he took. The probabilities, 
however, are in his favor, for mere skill of policy is never 
consistent, and in time is almost certain to overreach 
itself to the ruin of all its schemes. As we have seen 
from first to last, Cecilius Lord Baltimore met with no 
such fate, but imder king, under parliament, under com- 
monwealth, and under restored kingdom, maintained or 
soon recovered his own. 

The next thing that ought to occupy our attention, 
to proceed logically, is the charter under which the colony 
was sent to Maryland. As we have seen, George Calvert, 
the first Lord Baltimore, had been for many years con- 
nected with efforts at colonization, and as a practical man 
he had seen the difficulties and the failures that had 
attended them. He was, therefore, prepared, when he 
sought the charter for Avalon, to avoid those causes which 
had produced failure ; and the charter for Maryland, which 
he secured nine years after, only proves how convinced he 
was that he had discovered the right means of success; 
for the charter for Maryland is almost identically the 



54 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

same as that for Avalon, the differences being in minor 
features. 

The great distinctive feature of both charters was that 
the whole gift was to one, and the whole administration 
placed in the hands of one. The earlier gifts by the crown 
had proven failures, because the intention of the grantees 
had not been to establish a colony, an empire, for the sake 
of the empire, in which the good of the people was to be 
looked to, and in which all laws and regulations should 
be such as would promote the permanent welfare of the 
people; but their intention had been to secure to them- 
selves certain commercial advantages through trade with 
the natives; and when this was not achieved, or the ex- 
pense was found too great, the charter was allowed to fall. 
Besides, instead of having one man at the head of affairs, 
and so a consistent administration, there was a council in 
England, and a council in the colony, each composed of 
many members, which must of necessity produce, either 
apathy from divided counsels, or else antagonism and 
jealousy. 

Lord Baltimore avoided all this in both his charters. 
They w^ere each given at a time when the heart of the 
king was warm to him; and to the king's mind such a 
territory even as Maryland was to be lightly esteemed, — 
a wilderness inhabited only by savages, if inhabited at all. 
The king also, either James or Charles, would have had 
no objection to granting such a charter, conveying such 
powers, for it was exactly the f onn of government that they 
thought was the best, and the form they would have 
secured for themselves at home had it been possible. 
For, first of all, there was the inherent and essential right 
of the absolute lord, which was the title granted by the 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 55 

.charter, and the title which the Lords BaUimore claimed 
and vised all the way down. Their right was absolute, 
something which the people had not given and which 
they could not take away. Now-a-days for the king to 
attempt to confer such high-sounding phrases would be 
deemed absurd, but not so then; for, as we have' seen, the 
king claimed the right, and it was allowed, of absolute 
control over all foreign territories gotten by discovery, or, 
as they said, by right of conquest. The king ruled by 
right divine, and not by act of Parliament. The kingdom 
belonged to him, and while it came to be that he could 
not exercise absolute power, though Henry the Seventh 
and his immediate successors did, over their home coun- 
try, the rights of the people to the foreign dominions had 
not yet been perceived. To-day they are so well per- 
ceived, that if Queen Victoria were to attempt to bestow 
a hundred-acre farm in Africa or Australia by patent in 
virtue of any absolute right in British possessions there, 
the world would look on in amused astonishment. 

But if he was made absolute lord, powers were given 
to make that title real. All the gifts under the charter 
were to run from father to son forever, not only title to 
the soil, but the powers of government. It was intended to 
be an hereditary monarchy, as much so as England itself , 
and, as will be remembered, it continued to be so till the 
family became extinct. There were intervals when they 
were deprived of the administration, but in each case 
restoration took place after a while. 

Another feature in keeping with the royal mind of that 
day, was the privilege granted by the fourteenth section, 
of conferring favors, rewards, honors, and to adorn with 
titles and dignities. Lord Baltimore had gotten his two 



56 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

titles of Knight and Baron from King James. It was a 
royal privilege. And so, when Charles would bestow his 
gift, he granted to the absolute lord he made the same 
privilege, only limiting that the titles and dignities con- 
ferred should not be the same with those of England. 
This same privilege was granted in other charters, and 
though there were some absurd titles proposed in North 
Carolina, yet it is astonishing that through the colonial 
period, with the fond infatuation that many have for that 
kind of honor, so very few, if any, such titles were con- 
ferred. Your Excellency, as associated with office; your 
Honor, as associated with the bench, with colonels, gen- 
erals, doctors, scattered with no parsimonious hand, are 
about all the American mind has ever cared for. 

The creating of manors also, with manorial rights, was 
provided for, the right cognate with the royal one of 
creating a province; with the right of the holder of the 
manor to set up Court leet and court baron to regulate 
justice within his territory, to raise the hue and cry, that 
is, to summon the whole body of the people for the appre- 
hension of an accused person. This was a feudal right, 
and to a small extent it was exercised. It was not, however, 
harmonious with the spirit of the colony and soon fell 
into disuse. 

Another royal right conferred was that of proposing 
laws, the sixth clause of the charter running in this way: 
We grant to the same Baron, etc.: to ordain, make and 
enact laws, of what kind soever, of and with the advice, 
assent, and approbation of the free men of the same pro- 
vince, or of the greater part of them. Here the intention 
evidently was that the laws should proceed from the 
proprietary, who had the power to ordain, make and enact, 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 5/ 

while the function and privilege granted to the free men 
were to assent to them. The people could originate 
nothing. They could refuse to accept, that was all. We 
can at once see what a vast attribute of tyranny was here 
claimed. The thousand things that in a body politic 
would have to be provided for, must be neglected until 
the lord proprietary should suggest a law covering them, 
and then the law would have to be such as suited him, and 
not such as the people might think bfest fitted for the need. 
In other words, he was the law-making power, and the 
people only had the veto, as if to-day the President of the 
United States, or the Governor of this State, should have 
the exclusive power to propose the laws, which the people 
must accept or else go without; an entire reversal of all 
our notions of the relative duties of ruler and people. 

Lord Baltimore tried to carry out the terms of this 
clause when the people came together to legislate for the 
welfare of the colony, but he soon found that his scheme 
would not work; for the people refused to recognize his 
laws as proposed, and then proceeded to consider them 
as if originatifig with themselves. In this they estab- 
lished a precedent which Lord Baltimore saw it best to 
accept in his future administration. The power to pro- 
pose laws became the equal power of both. The disast- 
rous consequences of the attempted method would have 
been the greater because Cecilius Lord Baltimore was 
never in the colony, and his laws were sent over from Eng- 
land. One condition, however, was associated with the 
law-making power bestowed, "that the laws should be 
consonant to reason, and not repugnant or contrary, but 
so far as conveniently may be, agreeable to the laws, 
statutes, customs and rights of our kingdom of England." 



58 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

The police power of providing for emergencies was also 
granted by the charter, even to the liberty of proclaiming 
martial law in the time of insurrection or rebellion. 

One thing, however, was strongly insisted on all the 
time, that all the citizens of the colony were always to be 
regarded as being liege subjects of the king of England. 
The allegiance of the lord of the province might be indi- 
cated by a very simple and easy service, the presentation 
of two arrow-heads once a year, but with it went the 
duties as well as the rights and privileges of all the people 
as English subjects. What a battle was fought out on 
that line in the after-days of the colony! It was a most 
excellent principle on which to hang a claim; and that is 
what the people did, and contended for it till they had 
secured a victory. We shall see this further on. 

Abundant provision was made for the emoluments of 
the proprietary. He claims to have spent forty thousand 
pounds sterling in establishing his province, and there is 
no reason to doubt that he did. How it could have been 
spent in or on the colony it would defy any attempt now 
to explain. P'or the whole outfit was insignificant, and the 
colony was composed of men who were capable of paying 
their own charges, for themselves and their servants, 
whose remuneration was received not in money, but in 
land. Probably far the greater part of this sum went into 
the pockets of courtiers who would use their influence in 
Lord Baltimore's behalf; for everything was bought and 
sold in that day, and courtiers were always needy ; though 
possibly a very large sum may have gone into the cofifers 
of the king himself, who was the most needy of them all. 
We know that when Charles the Second bestowed the 
charter of Pennsylvania upon William Penn, it was in 



THE MARYLAND CHARTER. 59 

liquidation of certain claims against the state which 
Penn had inherited from his father. Charles the First, 
who held back from no means by which he could obtain 
money, would not have failed to avail himself of such an 
opportunity as the alienation of an extensive province. 
In all transfers there is very apt to be a consideration, 
even if it is not avowed. In this way we can see how the 
forty thousand pounds might have been spent in the 
founding of Maryland. 

But Lord Baltimore's emoluments were abundant, and 
in time proved an excellent interest on his money. For 
by the charter the revenues of the province were to be 
his. Whatever export or import duties were levied 
were to be his; also all fines and forfeitures; also the pro- 
ceeds of the quit-rents, or the yearly charges upon the 
land; for the lands bestowed by him upon immigrants 
were always subject to a yearly charge, made known in 
the conditions of plantation. These last amounted in the 
year 1770 to seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling, 
net, and with the revenue from other sources gave him a 
total sum of about twelve thousand pounds. In the 
earlier years of the colony, of course, the amount received 
was insignificant alongside of this, but then the people 
sometimes supplemented the small revenues by free gifts. 

By the twentieth section the king went even farther 
than this. He pledged and bound himself and his heirs 
and successors, that at no time would they "impose 
or cause to be imposed, any impositions, customs, 
or other taxations, quotas or contributions what- 
soever upon the residents or inhabitants of the pro- 
vince aforesaid, for their goods, lands, tenements, within 
the said province." All revenues from taxes, which were 



60 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

to be imposed by the proprietary and people, were to be 
for the use of the proprietary and the good government 
of the colony. This, some of you will recollect, gave 
Maryland a fair ground, above all the other colonies, for 
protesting against any kind of imposition of taxes by the 
English government; for the exemption by the charter 
even went so far as to cover " goods and merchandise to 
be laden or unladen in any of the ports or harbors of the 
province." It is true. Parliament did not recognize or 
allow this right of the king to exempt any colony, but it 
belonged to the charter rights of Maryland, which had 
been acquiesced in by Parliament for over a hundred 
years. Maryland's position, therefore, when she refused 
the stamped paper, or when she destroyed the cargo of 
tea in Annapolis harbor, was a stronger one that that of 
any of the other colonies. In the colony of Georgia, 
when her charter was given, in 1732, the right of Parlia- 
ment to levy taxes upon the people was distinctly 
asserted. 

The charter was wonderfully drawn up. It created an 
empire within the empire. It gave most extensive func- 
tions to the head of the government. It made Maryland 
practically free of Great Britain from the beginning. It 
did not attempt to enjoy its full freedom, for often the 
people found it very convenient to limit the extensive 
prerogatives of the proprietary by claiming the rights 
and privileges of liege subjects of England. Still, the free- 
dom was there, to be pleaded against England to restrain 
her presumptions when injustice or tyranny was attempted ; 
and the spirit was fostered by it to restrain her own gov- 
ernors and officer's, when under the charter their claims or 
exactions were in danger of becoming extravagant. 



FOURTH LECTURE. 

The Coming of the Colonists. 

" Maryland has always enjoyed the unrivaled honor of 
being the first colony which was erected into a province 
of the English empire and governed regularly by laws 
enacted in a provincial assembly." These are the words 
of Chalmers, whose work on the American Colonies 
stands at the head, both as to time and value, of the 
standard authorities in the matter of the English settle- 
ments on the Atlantic! coast. "The unrivaled honor of 
being the first colony erected into a province"; for a 
colony differs from a province, in that " colony " is a less 
exact term, indicating nothing more definite than a settle- 
ment, while a province implies a definite government, a 
fixed order. It is a section of the empire, and a part of it, 
while it possesses, subordinate to the empire, a certain 
independence of jurisdiction. We recollect the provinces 
of the Roman empire, over which there were placed consuls 
or other great officers of state, who, while the emperor 
could appoint them or remove them, could at the same 
time exercise the highest functions of government, mili- 
tary and civil, subject in certain cases to appeal. The 
province was part of the empire. The Greek colonies, 
however, were often merely the overflow of the parent 
state, sailing away, whether to Asia or to Italy, and 
becoming themselves a new state. 

Of this class of colonies was Massachusetts, or to speak 
more correctly, the settlement at Plymouth, whose mem- 



62 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

bers landed in America in 1620. They had formeriy been 
a colony in Holland, but deprived in that gracious land of 
that stimulus that could alone excite their enthusiasm and 
devotion, persecution at the hands of those who did not 
hold with them, they came to America and settled, mak- 
ing their own laws, choosing their own officers, executing 
the functions of state as best pleased them. They would 
have been a colony in that sense if they had gone to the 
Pacific coast or found their home in the South seas. But 
Maryland was a province, a definite part of the empire. 
Other such provinces were afterwards created, but Mary- 
land was the first. 

This function of a province is expressed in the second 
clause of the quotation: "governed regularly by laws 
enacted in a provincial assembly." The earlier charters, 
as we have seen, did not provide for such assemblies, but 
a council, appointed by the king, made laws, or the people 
were governed by proclamation. The charter of Avalon 
did provide for the assembly of the freemen, but that was 
an abortive attempt and soon came to nothing. From the 
beginning, however, Maryland had her assemblies, who 
determined for themselves what laws should govern them, 
refusing to accept any that they did not approve, and inti- 
mating distinctly what they wished to have. It was this 
freedom of making laws for their own government, which 
came afterwards to be possessed and exercised by all the 
colonies, that fostered the spirit of freedom that at last 
demanded independence. Self - government went on, 
becoming more and more definite year after year, so that 
finally, in response to an attempt to exercise humiliating 
and undue control, the colonies, one and all, said, We will 
be entirely free. And Maryland first possessed this honor. 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 63 

Let US now look at the province of Maryland as under 
the charter it was first intended to be. It was the first of 
all the colonies to have its boundaries definitely deter- 
mined, and according to them it ought to be a great deal 
larger than it is now. For on the north it was to run with 
the fortieth degree of north latitude, and yet, if you will 
examine the map, you will find that that line will carry 
the state beyond Philadelphia, Again, on the west it was 
to be bounded by a north and south line to the farthest 
source of the Potomac; yet, if you will look, to-day you 
will see that a large section of the territory that is included 
within that line, belongs to West Virginia. Again follow- 
ing the farthest bank of the Potomac to the mouth of the 
river, the line was to pass across the bay and the eastern 
peninsula to the Atlantic ocean; but instead, the present 
line of division is to the north of that. Then the line was 
to run with the Atlantic and the Delaware bay and river 
back to the fortieth degree of north latitude; but within 
that region lies the State of Delaware. You see, therefore, 
how large a part of Maryland has been lost to it. 

Why? Because other parties possessed greater skill 
and greater influence than Lord Baltimore did. As 
regards the large section of Pennsylvania that of right 
belonged to Maryland, it is to be said that neither Lord 
Baltimore nor William Penn knew about the boundaries 
of their two territories where the fortieth degree would 
run; and that afterwards, when it was discovered that 
Lord Baltimore's right, in virtue of prior grant, covered 
the territory above where Penn had fixed his city of 
brotherly love, it became an earnest and shrewd effort on 
Penn's part, by every conceivable subtlety of misrepresen- 
tation, to claim the region as far south as the present 



64 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

boundary. Penn wanted for his colony the commercial 
advantages which would be furnished by the Delaware 
bay and river, and he and his sons, being of superior skill 
to Lord Baltimore and his son, got at last what they 
desired, though the long contention was not finally settled 
till the year 1760. 

Penn's ambition, however, did not stop with desiring 
this large section on the north of Maryland. He soon 
came to yearn for Delaware as well. This was, as we 
have seen, a part of Maryland beyond all question; but it 
was lost to her through two pleas. The first of these was, 
that when Lord Baltimore got his charter it was expressly 
stipulated that the territory given should be found uncul- 
tivated, whereas it was said that Delaware was already 
occupied along its shores by the Dutch and Swedes, and 
that this invalidated his title. The other plea was, that 
the Dutch and Swedes having been permitted to con- 
tinue and retain their settlements, without having been 
compelled to acknowledge Lord Baltimore as proprietor, 
it was a tacit acquiescence in their right, and that when 
they, along with New York, were reduced by the English, 
their settlement, as a dependency of the Dutch colony, 
passed to the Duke of York when that territory was 
bestowed upon him. 

William Penn, in his desire for commercial advantages 
for his province, of course yearned for Delaware also, a 
yearning that James satisfied by passing it to him. Con- 
tentions arose, Lord Baltimore struggling to retain his 
own. In 1685, however, James being now king, the deci- 
sion was given against Baltimore's right, and the present 
division of the peninsula between Delaware and Mary- 
land took place. As to the claim that the Dutch and 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 65 

Swedes occupied the territory, the fact that the English 
did not recognize their right but regarded them as inter- 
lopers, ought to have been a sufficient answer in law. The 
whole, however, was rather a question of influence and of 
private favor, than of law. 

As to the loss of territory on the western part of the 
province, the question was in the beginning, which was 
the farthest source of the Potomac; for the geography of 
Mar}dand was then wholly undetermined. There was no 
distinct purpose of fraud, as in the other case, no evident 
intention to seize, through influence in high quarters, 
upon what belonged to another. According to the con- 
ditions of the charter, however, the south branch of the 
Potomac is the true line of division. The same also is 
true of the small bit of territory along the southern line, 
on the Eastern Shore. 

The first body of immigrants that came to Maryland 
brought with it every assurance of success that the enter- 
prise admitted of. Lord Baltimore himself did not come 
over, seeing it to be his interest to remain in England to 
guard his rights, which were sure to be assailed. But the 
men that did come possessed, as a body, every qualifica- 
tion that promised success. For, first of all, the company 
consisted in part of twenty ^'gentlemen," which meant 
men well born, of fair intelligence and some education. 
They were such men as in England would have exercised 
influence in their own communities. There may have 
been exceptions among them as regards some of these 
particulars, but that probably was the character of the prin- 
cipal body. Again, they were certainly men of enterprise ; 
for everything indicates that they did not come out to 
America " to play the gentleman," or to discover gold and 



66 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

silver mines, or to trade in a lucrative way with the Indians 
and to get rich suddenly ; but they came over to take up 
land and work, and make Maryland their home. All their 
interests were to be in the colony. They were also men 
of some property, not merely bankrupts that came over to 
improve their fortunes. This is seen in the fact that they 
brought with theai servants, for whose expenses of all 
kinds they had to provide, not only in the coming over, 
but also for the whole time that was to elapse till the first 
harvests could be gotten in. For it was not for Lord Bal- 
timore to provide for the colony in these things. They 
were to be at their own expense and charges, and were to 
receive in compensation certain quantities of land, accord- 
ing to the number of servants introduced. This number 
in the first company that came was from six to ten to each 
" gentleman." 

Observe, the servants here spoken of were not negroes, 
but white men, men that, wanting to come into the colony, 
and not having the means to pay their expenses, sold 
themselves for a term of years. There were negro slaves 
here from the foundation of the colony, but they were at 
first few in number, and these white men were doubtless 
often men of enterprise, and sometimes of as good birth 
and training as their masters. Only they were anxious to 
come to the province and had not the means necessary. 
For after they had worked out their time, they became 
freemen and were entitled for themselves and for their 
wives and children, to a certain portion of land, and so 
to become freeholders and exercise all the rights and 
privileges of the rest of the citizens. 

Evejy quality, therefore, was found in the early colonists, 
intelligence, property, character, industry. These quali- 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 6/ 

ties were demonstrated when the citizens were called to- 
gether to pass upon the condition of the colony and to 
provide laws for its government. There was another class 
of immigrants that came in afterwards, who were far from 
being so desirable, criminals of various classes and 
degrees, whom England shipped from her own shores to 
plague her colonies. They either died out or reformed, 
and it is possible that some of the best blood of Maryland 
had its origin in that source ; though it is none the worse 
for that. Possibly, also, through the influence of what 
scientific men call heredity, some of our great scamps and 
rascals are direct descendants of these same unwelcome 
importations. Certainly, there are found, sometimes in 
good society, families that have a taint of the blood, so 
that for generations past it has been true that no one of 
the name or connection has commanded public confi- 
dence. Later in the provincial history immigrants came 
into Maryland from many quarters, attracted by the liberal 
local institutions of the province, as well as by its generous 
naturalization laws and conditions of plantation. 

Now, though Maryland had such a good start, and 
such a good proprietary and such a good local governor; 
for Lord Baltimore showed his sincere faith in the enter- 
prise by sending his brother with the colony as governor; 
yet Maryland was not blessed for many years with peace, 
but contention followed Contention right along for a long 
while. I do not speak of discussions and disputations, 
such as took place in the House of Assembly over the 
rights and privileges of the people. For such things were 
right and according to a law of nature. Public claims 
have to come on as a surging tide and beat down barriers. 
It is the only way in which such can be beaten down. 



68 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Tempests in houses of Parliament and in Congress, 
whether American, or Enghsh, or Continental, may 
frighten timid souls, but they are, by the law of nature, 
grand manifestations of the human spirit. A mighty, boil- 
ing, foaming human sea they may seem to be, but that is 
the way the ocean of human life is kept pure. And those 
who attempt to build barriers against such tempests prove 
their folly by the ruin that overtakes their works. So 
Charles the First demonstrated his folly, so George the 
Third demonstrated his, and so Louis the Sixteenth his. 
The great power in this world's affairs is not the right 
divine of kings, but the divine right of God's voice speak- 
ing by the people. 

That is, therefore, not the kind of contentions I mean. 
Maryland had them all the way along, too, and our fathers 
of the state demonstrated their manhood in that way. 
But the contentions I mean were those great commo- 
tions in which the power and authority of the proprietary 
and his government were overthrown, and other power 
and authority set up in their stead. When Lord Balti- 
more's colony came into Maryland they had the mis- 
fortune to find that Kent Island, lying along the eastern 
shore of the bay, was already occupied by a number of 
persons — ^how many it is not known — who had settled 
there for convenience of trading with the Indians, with 
whom they were in frequent intercourse. This little com- 
munity had come out from Virginia and held themselves 
to be of that colony. At the head of them was William 
Claiborne, a man of enterprise, intelligence and great 
pertinacity of character, who, deeming that his rights had 
been invaded by the Maryland charter, and that Kent 
Island belonged to Virginia, of which he was a councillor, 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 69 

refused in every way to acknowledge the jurisdiction of 
Lord Baltimore. This was the beginning of a strife that 
lasted for twenty years. 

First of all, there was some reason for believing that he 
had tampered with the Indians, because instead of con- 
tinuing in their former friendly mind, they held aloof, 
refused to bring in provisions, and in other ways acted so 
suspiciously that the people stood in dread and felt com- 
pelled, for the sake of security, to build a block-house. 
Next, in the year 1635, matters came to an open rupture, 
and a naval batde was fought in the Pocomoke river, in 
which the small vessel belonging to Claiborne and manned 
with thirty men, which was out on a pirating expedi- 
tion, was taken. A litde while later another conflict took 
place, in which again Claiborne's force met with disaster. 
In the year 1644, however, he was more successful; for, 
having allied himself with Richard Ingle, who had form- 
erly given some trouble in the province, he had the 
ability to drive Governor Calvert to take refuge in Vir- 
ginia, and to hold the province for two years. This time 
he claimed to have the king's commission for his acts, but 
later, in 1652, when the royal power in England had been 
entirely overthrown, he received a commission from Par- 
liament, under which he was able to reduce Maryland and 
deprive the proprietary of all control. These troubles, 
gratifying the spirit of revenge which he so strongly 
fostered, lasted still for several years, after which Clai- 
borne disappeared from view. 

It was during these troubles that the batde of the 
Severn w^as fought, in the year 1655. The occasion of 
the batde was this: When the parliamentary commis- 
sioners had reduced the colony to obedience, they retained 



70 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

the then governor, Stone, he promising to conform, in his 
administration, to the new order of things. When, how- 
ever, Lord Baltimore rebuked him for betraying the trust 
committed to him, and stimulated him to reassume author- 
ity in his name, Stone was moved to attempt it, and, 
gathering a force in that part of the colony that had 
always been loyal to Lord Baltimore, St. Mary's County, 
he led them up along the bay to the Severn, where a few 
years before a settlement of Puritans from Virginia had 
been made. The force was divided, some passing by land 
and some by water, the vessels keeping near enough to 
the shore to assist the land forces, when needful, in cross- 
ing the creeks and rivers. These Puritans, in the present 
troubles, had of course resisted the authority of the pro- 
prietary, because they were in sympathy with the parlia- 
mentary cause, and because for religion's sake they 
objected to being under the jurisdiction of Lord Balti- 
more, who was of the faith which they abhorred. They 
also objected to the powers and title which he held, as 
being absolute lord, to whom the oath of allegiance and 
obedience was to be taken. 

When Stone reached the Severn, whatever may have 
been his expectations, he found himself face to face with 
a force, partly military and partly naval, which soon, in 
the encounter which ensued, put his whole army to rout 
and took him and many others prisoners. Under what 
plea, it is not said, but in spite of the promise of quarter, 
when the surrender was made, some of the soldiers were 
put to death by court-martial, and Stone himself was only 
saved by the appeal of the Puritan soldiers themselves 
and some of the women of the place. The battle was 
fought about where Annapolis now stands. These Puri- 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. /I 

tans had sought refuge in Maryland, having been com- 
pelled by Governor Berkeley to leave Virginia on 
account of their religion. They had, also, been induced 
by Governor Stone to choose Maryland as their place of 
refuge, under the promise of indulgence for their religious 
views and methods. It is not clear why, when they had 
the opportunity, they should have indulged such malig- 
nant feelings toward him. 

After this episode the proprietary jurisdiction lapsed, 
and continued so till Cromwell ordered its restitution; 
and even then it was not finally secured to him; for the 
governor of his own choice and appointment, Fendall, 
again surrendered it into the hands of the malcontents. 
By 1659, however, all was finally adjusted, to remain so, as 
it proved, only till 1689, when, upon the Revolution having 
taken place in England, by which James the Second was 
dethroned and William and Mary advanced to power, the 
people of Mar)'land overturned the government of Lord 
Baltimore and asked to be taken under the royal juris- 
diction. The reason for such a course was that they were 
in sympathy with parliamentary ideas as opposed to royal 
absolutism, and had also grown to feel great dissatisfac- 
tion with the proprietary administration, under which the 
best interests of the province, moral, educational and reli- 
gious, had been neglected. 

From this time on till 171 5, about twenty-six years, the 
Baltimore family was stripped of all civil power and 
authority, though not of their private right in the soil. 
They were allowed to draw revenue from their whole 
landed interest in Maryland, the same as any other pro- 
prietor. In 1 71 5, however, authority and jurisdiction 
were restored, and continued to be exercised till the 



72 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

people assumed jurisdiction, in the times preceding the 
American Revolution. 

Now, why was it that Lord Baltimore had so much 
trouble through all this period, four insurrections in the 
course of the first fifty-five years — 1644, 1652, 1659, 1689? 
Evidence is abundant and satisfactory that Cecilius Lord 
Baltimore was a man of eminent wisdom, and one in the 
very slightest degree willing to offend his people. Also it 
is in evidence that during his long life, dying as he did in 
1675, he had the confidence of the people. He was a just, 
honorable, upright ruler. The same also may be said of 
his son and successor, who was so many years resident in 
the province. Why then, it may well be asked, was he so 
unfortunate as to have the colony so frequently disturbed 
and the people so suspicious as to be ever ready for 
rebellion? 

The probable answer is not far to seek. In one great 
and cardinal matter Lord Baltimore was not in sympathy 
with his people, namely, the all-important matter of reli- 
gion; in that day more important than in this, because 
religion entered so much more into the civil administra- 
tion. In these days we should put under the ban any 
man that would refuse to vote for another on the ground 
simply that he differed from him in religion. It is true it 
is often done, but not avowedly because of the man's reli- 
gious profession, but rather because of some qualities in 
his own character, as that he would use his official posi- 
tion to promote either the advantage of his own church 
or the interests of the members of his church. But in the 
days of Cecilius Calvert it was not so. For then religious 
antagfonisms were as strong and as violently expressed as 
feelings or opinions are now concerning tariff issues or 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 73 

questions involving the right of the general government 
to interfere with the rights of the separate States. The 
feeling about religion was deep and often malignant. 
Even Charles the First, though he was the donor to the 
Lords Baltimore of the handsome property and preroga- 
tives bestowed, was in his heart strongly antagonistic to 
their faith, and if he, how much more the people not only 
of England but of the colony also ; for from the beginning 
the great body of the people abhorred Lord Baltimore's 
creed, and as time went on the preponderance of this 
sentiment increased. 

This question of religion entered into everything. 
Take the oath of allegiance, for instance. One would 
suppose that it would be sufificient for that simply to 
embody the promise to uphold the powers that be, and to 
maintain the laws. But it went much farther than that 
and decried the right and pretensions of the Roman pontiff 
to excommunicate kings and thereby depose them. And 
the oath of supremacy went farther than this, in that it 
declared the king to be the only supreme governor in his 
realm and dominions in all spiritual and ecclesiastical 
things and causes. The question of religion was the 
burning question of that day. It entered into everything. 
It excited passion, created suspicion, separated men from 
men, justified the most hideous and exhausting wars. It 
was not, however, because it was religion, but rather 
because there were associated with religion the most 
unwarrantable and extensive claims, to depose monarchs, 
to relieve the people of the duty and obligation of obe- 
dience. And these claims had sometimes taken the most 
substantial and terrible form; nations being hurled into 
the vortex of civil war, and the land ruined, according as 



74 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

men would recognize the validity of these claims or would 
maintain the rights of their civil rulers. 

This great, wide-spread principle was at the bottom of 
the disaffection of the people for Cecilius Lord Baltimore 
and his son. Whatever may have been their wisdom and 
uprightness, yet their church and religious connections 
they feared; as was evidenced by the fact that as long as 
these two held the government, that is, till the Protestant 
Revolution in 1689, fault was found and apprehension 
expressed. No man, probably, ever did less to deserve 
the apprehension, yet the sensitiveness of the people kept 
them always on the alert. Probably it was never so much 
what they did as what they left undone, the want of sym- 
pathy and interest in the people in matters of the highest 
concern, religion and education, which in that day was 
always connected with religion. The colony was assailed 
even before it was out of English waters, and brought 
back and made to take the oath of allegiance, containing, 
as we have seen, a clause denying the Pope's right to 
temporal power as it was then understood. This was the 
power to depose the English monarch, a clause inserted 
in the oath against the adherents of the Roman church, 
because such a power was claimed and had before been 
exercised in England itself; it had been claimed, though 
it could not be exercised, as late as the days of Queen 
Elizabeth. When the first Lord Baltimore visited Vir- 
ginia, in 1629, he was approached with the demand to 
take these oaths of allegiance and supremacy. 

The first proprietary knew of this feeling among the 
people and recognized it from the first, knew that he was 
not in harmony with the people. This is strongly indi- 
cated in the "Instructions" given November, 1633, when 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 75 

the colony was about to sail, the first of which was " that 
the governor and commissioners be very careful that they 
suffer no scandal nor offense to be given to any of the 
Protestants, whereby any just complaint may hereafter 
be made by them in Virginia or in England, and that for 
that end they cause all acts of the Roman Catholic reli- 
gion to be done as privately as may be, and that they 
instruct all the Roman Catholics to be silent vipon all 
occasions of discourse concerning matters of religion, and 
that the said governor and commissioners treat. the Pro- 
testants with as much mildness and favor as justice will 
permit." 

In the fourth "Instruction" we read that by the first 
opportunity after their arrival in Maryland they cause 
a messenger to be dispatched away to Jamestown, " such 
a one as is conformable to the Church of England." In 
the fifth we again read that a messenger was to be sent to 
Captain Claiborne, "one likewise conformable to the 
Church of England." Evidently, among the "gentle- 
men " of his first colony there were some Protestants to 
perform these offices. 

These " Instructions " show his recognition of the 
difficulties of his situation. He knew he did not have 
the confidence'^ of the people, that they were keenly 
anxious concerning the whole matter of his faith, and 
therefore he was watchful not to give offense. The same 
policy was exhibited when it came to the administration 
of the settlement, for when on one occasion a Protestant 
chapel was violated, and when, on another, abusive lang- 
uage was indulged in against some that were reading a 
Protestant book, the offense was instantly rebuked and 
punished. 



^^ HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

It was this question that gave Lord Baltimore his hands 
full of trouble and vexation from the start. His own 
church and the religious order that he had for some 
reason sent over, who were not then known as they came 
afterwards to be known, and to be reprobated both by 
popes and kings, — the Jesuits, harassed him by their 
assumptions in a matter of the highest moment; for they 
assumed, by an old ecclesiastical pretension, which had 
excited the antagonism of the crown and people of Eng- 
land in early days, — the right to acquire lands for them- 
selves irrespective of the civil power altogether. In Eng- 
land, at one time, of course, such lands might be received 
by gift, devise or purchase, and being received were held 
forever. To prevent this the statute of mortmain was 
passed, which prevented the conveyance of landed prop- 
erty to the church, lest the church should, in the course 
of ages, swallow up the whole kingdom. The Jesuits in 
Maryland attempted to ignore this entirely, and though, 
under the charter, all of the territory of Maryland belonged 
to the proprietor, they attempted to override his right by 
acquiring land directly from the Indians, and to hold it 
independently of him and without his consent. 

He fought them diligently on this question, though in 
doing so he excited doubts in the minds of the Jesuit 
fathers whether he was a true "CathoHc"; while his 
secretary, Lewger, was vilified as if the leaven of his old 
Protestantism still pervaded his whole spirit. On the 
other hand Lord Baltimore could use severe language, 
and he exercised his capacity for epithets entirely without 
stint Through the influence of the provincial of the order, 
however, he was able at last to reduce them to his will. 
He even ordered their withdrawal from the province; but 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 7/ 

when they at last submitted, he proceeded no further. 
Doubtless the sole question with him was not their pre- 
rogative as churchmen to hold the land in such ^ a way, 
though that would have excited his rebuke, but for 
example's sake; for had they been allowed to acquire 
lands in an English province, in violation of a law of 
the kingdom of England, and that one of the most 
important laws that an anxious people ever passed for 
their protection, and for which they had been compelled 
to strive through many years, and to counteract many 
devious and indirect attempts to circumvent the law, the 
fact would have struck a death-blow at his tenure of his 
territory. For a Roman Catholic to enjoy religious liberty 
in an English dependency, was in that day strange enough, 
but for a Roman Catholic order to have the power of 
acquiring property to an untold extent, would have ex- 
cited the bitterest denunciation. Out of this struggle 
came the Maryland law requiring the consent of the 
legislature for any church organization to hold land 
beyond a small lot for church or house purposes. 

Before the colony left England the difficulty of the 
situation was fully and clearly understood, as is evidenced 
by a paper drawn up by the provincial of the Jesuits, 
within the year preceding their departure, for the guidance 
of the proprietary and the society. For that paper was 
prepared for arming Lord Baltimore and the members of 
the Roman Catholic church against certain objections 
that would probably be made against the church, in view 
of various English laws as well as for other causes ; and its 
purpose was to provide answers to such objections. The 
whole thing seemed to be wonderful at that time, that a 
body of men who were, however unjustly, looked upon 



yS HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

with SO much suspicion as being mahgnant against their 
native land, should be allowed to leave it endowed with 
so many privileges and prerogatives, and to establish a 
province within the English dominions with such exten- 
sive jurisdiction. There is no wonder, therefore, that 
from the start so much objection should have been made. 

This explains the insurrections and disturbances within 
the colony. The majority of the people were always 
opposed to Lord Baltimore in this matter of religion, and 
with the opposition they were afraid of him. For beside 
the insurrections which were always conducted by those 
of the Protestant faith, there were complaints heard from 
time to time, as that he had put all the offices in the hands 
of Roman Catholics, that the Roman Catholics were pre- 
paring a rising against the Protestants, that the oath of 
allegiance which they were required to take was to one of 
the Roman faith, that ministers and churches of the 
Roman faith were provided for, while all Protestants were 
neglected. Also when the province was in the hands of 
the Puritans, during the troubles between 1652 and 1659, 
their animus was strongly expressed against the Roman 
Catholics, though they included members of the Church 
of England as well — papists and prelatists. For it is to be 
remembered that in 1676 Charles, the third Lord Balti- 
more, who had just returned to England, after a long resi- 
dence in Maryland as governor under his father, said that 
the nonconformists in the colony outnumbered the mem- 
bers of the Church of England and the Roman Catholics 
together, about three to one. 

The position of Lord Baltimore was therefore most 
difficult. The colonists from time to time expressed con- 
fidence, made provision for revenue, and apparently were 



THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS. 79 

well content to live and thrive under his jurisdiction, who- 
ever might be the absolute lord at the time. But they 
never loved him, never admired, never had faith in him; 
and let occasion arise, they were immediately ready to 
throw off his authority. Their fears were always ready 
to be called into play; they seemed to be incapable of 
understanding that one of his faith was or could be reli- 
able, a state of feeling that all through this period, down 
to the time of the Protestant revolution, was fostered by 
the condition of things in England and on the Continent. 
For while the whole Continent was agitated by the ques- 
tion of religion, England was passing through that series 
of civil and military disturbances that, beginning with the 
accession of Charles the First, did not end till his son 
James was finally driven from the throne and England, 
because of his arbitrary pretensions in what he esteemed 
the cause of religion. 



FIFTH LECTURE. 

The Legislation of the Province. ' 

A feature of the province from the beginning, which, 
though not legislative, had the force of law, was the 
"Conditions of Plantation," or the conditions published 
as an inducement to persons to transplant themselves to 
Maryland. These were always generous, and in the 
beginning particularly so, because the territory was abund- 
ant, and useless unless occupied. As immigrants became 
more numerous the terms became less generous, but were 
always sufficiently so to keep up a constant stream of 
people into the province. In 1633, when the colony was 
setting out for Maryland, the offers of the proprietary 
were, that to every one who brought in five men between 
sixteen and fifty years of age, two thousand acres should 
be given, the proprietary exacting for himself an annual 
quit-rent of four hundred pounds of wheat. To every 
one that brought in less than five men one hundred acres 
were given for himself, one hundred for his wife, for 
every servant one hundred, and for every child under 
sixteen years fifty acres, a child over sixteen being 
regarded as an adult. In this case the quit-rent was ten 
pounds of wheat for every fifty acres. In 1634 and 1635, 
when the colony had been started, two thousand acres 
were allowed for ten men, with a yearly rent of six 
hundred pounds of wheat, while to those who brought 
in less than ten the same gifts were made for each, only 
with the annual quit-rent of seventy pounds for every 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 8 1 

fifty acres. In 1641 a further reduction was made in 
the amount of land given, — two thousand acres for 
twenty men, with fifty acres for each adult and twenty- 
five for each child, with a further increase in the amount 
of quit-rent. 

Sometimes persons, either at once or at various times, 
brought in more than the number given, so that exten- 
sive estates were held by individuals. Thomas Com- 
waleys, one of the most important and enterprising of 
the first settlers, introduced fifty-one persons in all, so 
that his estates, which were held in different parts of the 
colony, were very extensive. One thousand acres or 
more, were a manor, of which the early intention was 
not only that such should be the name, but also that it 
should carry with it certain territorial authority, such 
as the holding of manorial courts and the prosecution of 
cfifenders both in civil and criminal cases. 

Evidently in the charter the intention had been to 
make the lords of the manor a colonial aristocracy, hav- 
ing peculiar class rights and privileges. Permission was 
given to Lord Baltimore to create such an aristocracy, 
and this was a move in that direction. For in his laws 
submitted in 1637 there was one providing for the trial 
of a lord of a manor, as if he were of a superior class of 
citizens, and by it he was to be treated as in England a 
member of the House of Lords was treated, — tried by his 
peers, if a sufficient number could be found, in any 
accusation against him; and if condemned to capital pun- 
ishment, it was to be, not by hanging, as all the rest of 
the people, but by decapitation. As the method by which 
manors were obtainable was the ability to bear the 
expense of bringing a given number of servants to the 



82 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

colony, neither respectability nor intelligence necessarily 
accompanying such ability, one feels that Lord Baltimore 
did not exhibit his good sense in proposing such a law. 
It was, however, so offensive to the Assembly that it 
never passed to a third reading, and consequently Mary- 
land never had a landed aristocracy, no class that ever 
enjoyed exclusive privileges. The manorial right of 
exercising civil and criminal jurisdiction, of apprehending 
and trying offenders, and keeping the peace, was exer- 
cised, but only for a limited period. It was soon entirely 
superseded everywhere by the usual magisterial and 
county courts, the latter consisting of the magistrates 
of the county sitting as a bench. How strange it is 
that though other colonies, as New England, New York 
and Virginia, have bestowed a kind of prescriptive honor 
upon the families of their founders, Maryland has done 
nothing of the kind, so that even the names of the 
greater part of the first founders are unknown. I do 
not speak of what the archives may show, but of the fact 
as it is in common life. One may guess at the reason 
of this, but cannot be certain. There are various old 
names in Maryland, but they do not date from the begin- 
ning, and where they do exist, do not claim, and do not 
receive, any special consideration on that account. 

Now in attempting to understand the legislation of the 
colony we must try to understand the population, for 
there was no quackery in Maryland in law-making, but 
definite, practical work all the time. By quackery I 
mean such attempt as was made in North Carolina, 
where the philosopher Locke got out for the proprie- 
taries a whole body of laws, which, however perfect in 
themselves, were not fitted for the work they were 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 83 

intended to do. Laws grow out of the needs of the 
people, and out of the minds of the people, an expres- 
sion of their voice; and whenever they are not that, or 
have ceased to be that as society has advanced, they are 
inoperative or obsolete. That is the reason there are so 
many dead laws on the statute-books, laws in some 
instances that have always been dead. They have been 
begotten of enthusiasm, or they have been run through 
the legislature in some emergency, and, meeting no need, 
they hav^e ceased to be. Lord Baltimore attempted to 
prescribe such laws for the regulation of the people, 
while living in England, and utterly ignorant of the 
thousand peculiarities that were found in the little local 
company in the wilderness; but the people feeling the 
Englishman's right, and knowing how fully that right 
was ignored in England at this time, — the period of 
eight or nine years after Charles had dissolved his last 
parliament, — they rejected Lord Baltimore's pretensions, 
and presented and passed their own laws. They were 
passed subject to his approval; nor did they deny his 
right to suggest, but only his exclusive right. It is true 
he was acting according to his charter right, as that 
charter was drawn up by himself or his father and 
approved by the king. Free-bom Englishmen, however, 
had a prescriptive right, which was founded upon a 
greater charter, the Magna Charta, which Englishmen 
had wrung from a previous king. 

Now, what about the population? It was greatly 
mixed from the start, and mixed in various ways. First 
as to social condition and distinction; for while many of 
the servants were of good birth and breeding, as Corn- 
waleys says in regard to some that he had brought over. 



84 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Others were doubtless of the ignorant and laboring class. 
But all were willing emigrants, having left their home 
because they desired to better their fortunes, the very 
best material out of which new states could be made. 
Afterwards there came in another class composed of 
those who were sent from England for various crimes, 
sometimes felons, sometimes those charged with smaller 
offenses, sometimes state prisoners who had been taken 
in arms. But in the beginning it was the better elements 
of society that made up the body of the people. In fact, 
it was only such that would brave the deep and the 
dangers of the wilderness as they were thought to be; 
and on one occasion, when it was propounded as an 
alternative to a felon under sentence of death that he 
should pass over to the colonies or go to the gallows, he 
chose the gallows as the shorter road to the end of the 
miseries of life. 

The term of service for which indented servants were 
bound, was generally five years, after which they became 
freemen. And as universal suffrage was the law of the 
colony at first, being limited to freeholders only after 
1 68 1, and every man could enjoy the privilege of a seat 
and voice in the Assembly, a man that was a servant 
to-day might be a lawmaker to-morrow. 

Another class of people was found in the colony at 
the start, that is, emigrants from Virginia who had settled 
a few years before on Kent Island in the Chesapeake. 
These were Englishmen, of course, but because the Vir- 
ginians had objected to the grant to Lord Baltimore 
of the territory which up to this time had belonged to 
them, these colonists were from the start hostile to Lord 
Baltimore and gave him what trouble they could. This 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 8$ 

is the settlement that had been made by Claiborne, and 
for whose privileges, as independent of Maryland, he 
waged such warfare. 

Then again there was another class that came into the 
province from the year 1644 onwards. They were Puri- 
tans that had been expelled from Virginia because of 
their religious faith, for Virginia always differed radically 
from Maryland in the matter of tolerating dissent. In 
fact, the governor. Sir Wm. Berkeley, was severe in every 
way, and tolerated in no degree any dissent from the 
legal and established order. The Puritans came into 
Maryland because they were assured of liberty in religion 
and of all the privileges of citizenship; but being here, 
and firmly secured in their possessions, their conscience 
troubled them about submission to one who, as they 
thought, was of the false church and faith. They were 
the most troublesome of all those who went to make up 
the early colony, for they were irrepressible, and until the 
year 1659 gave constant trouble and offered frequent 
violence. As long as either Parliament or Protector was 
controlling affairs in England they created disturbance 
in the colony. When Cromwell was dead they settled 
down into peaceful ways, and seem after a few years to 
have abandoned their early propensity to contention. 
Naturalization of foreigners was provided for in the 
Assembly of 1659-60, and soon after various nationalities 
came to be represented in the province. Later down the 
Germans especially settled in the western parts of the 
State, giving to society and enterprise there a very strong 
expression of their national characteristics. 

A troublesome body of men, however, was found 
where Lord Baltimore might well have had no cause for 



S6 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

anxiety. I speak of the members of the Society of Jesus, 
whom he had himself sent over to the colony in the 
beginning, and whom he had chosen for the work, not 
only of ministering to the people, but also to preach to 
the Indians, a work which they faithfully performed, at 
any rate at first. It is to be said of them, however, that 
with all tlieir devotion to their work, and all the occasion 
they had to show consideration for the proprietary, the 
members of the society that came into Maryland were, by 
their training, disqualified to be members of a free com- 
monwealth; for their training as ecclesiastics had given 
them the notion that as churchmen, that is, ministers of the 
church, they were not under the civil law at all, but were 
subject to the canon law and pontifical prescripts only; 
so that in whatever way they might offend the laws of the 
colony they could not be tried by the laws of the colony, 
but must be tried by the ecclesiastical or canon law, and 
that not by laymen, but by their own tribunal and by 
church officers of their own degree. Such a plea had 
been made and established during the supremacy of the 
church in earlier ages, and had been the occasion of 
many abuses. That it should have been attempted now 
again in an English dependency, near the middle of the 
seventeenth century, can only excite astonishment. 

But the claims of these Jesuit fathers not only covered 
the persons of the clergy, but also property and pre- 
rogative. They claimed jurisdiction in all testamentary 
cases and the administration of all estates. They claimed 
jurisdiction in the matter of matrimony also, pronounc- 
ing who should marry and the conditions under which 
persons should marry. In the same way they claimed 
the prerogative to act outside the common and statute 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 8/ 

law, and to acquire for the church any property that 
might in any way lie open to them. In other words, in 
view of the canon or ecclesiastical law in this case 
named, the clergy were a different state or community, 
not hnperiiim in imperio so much as an independent state 
and government, having its own laws and law officers, its 
own privileges and prerogatives, which, whenever and 
wherever there was conflict, was always to have prece- 
dence. 

The claims of the Jesuits were in part formulated by 
the priest Thomas Copley in 1638, of which the follow- 
ing are the points made by him: 

1st. That the church and our houses may be sanctuary 
(that is, might afford refuge to persons pursued by officers 
of the civil law). 

2d. That ourselves and our domestic servants and at 
least one-half of our planting servants may be free from 
public taxes and services. Though the rest of our ser- 
vants be ostensibly taxed, yet that privately the custom 
of the other Catholic countries be observed. 

3d. That though causes of priests be tried by public 
magistrates, yet that in private they know they do it as 
arbitrators and defenders of the church, because ecclesi- 
astical jurisdiction is not yet here settled. 

4th 

5th. That though we relinquish the use of many eccle- 
siastical privileges which we judge it convenient to do 
for satisfaction of the state at home, yet that it be left to 
our discretion to determine when this is requisite. 

This was an extreme and dangerous state of things, 
and Lord Baltimore immediately perceived it to be so. 
He had a great talent for expletives, and he launched 



88 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

them against the fathers without stint. The claims of 
the fathers invaded in an eminent degree, his own charter 
right to the property in the territory of the colony. They 
invaded also his own charter right to jurisdiction, and 
they exposed him to the severest animadversion of the 
Protestant people of the colony and at home. And so 
in 1 641 he pubHshed conditions of plantation covering 
the whole ground of controversy. The matter had by 
that time advanced to a point where the temper on both 
sides was severely tried. By the church all these claims 
were regarded as founded upon the gift of Christ to His 
church and as being the inalienable right of the so- 
called head of the church here on earth, resistance to 
which was deemed a gross sin. By Lord Baltimore the 
whole claim was denied and the canon law was declared 
not to reach to Maryland. 

According to the church's claim the canon law reached 
the citizen in all his duties as a member of the common- 
wealth, and in ai^ything that touched what the church 
might claim as belonging to her jurisdiction, which 
extended to almost all things that concerned either life 
or death, the citizen was supposed to have committed 
sin if he assisted in the denial to the church of her rights. 
All the claims of the church had been fully formulated 
in the Bulla in coena Domini, issued in 1536 when the 
Reformation was making its rapid strides. This had, to 
the members of the Roman church, the force of law, and 
in it supremacy is asserted for the church over all per- 
sons and powers, temporal and ecclesiastical. During the 
controversy reference to this was frequently made, and 
Lord Baltimore, as well as his local officers in the colony, 
were regarded as guilty of sin in their resistance. 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 89 

Fortunately for Lord Baltimore he had a man as 
secretary who was of his own mind in this matter, a 
member of his own church and a convert from the min- 
istry of the Church of England, who, being a married 
man, had not entered the ministry of the Church of 
Rome. He was an educated man and fully informed as 
to this whole question; for it was an old question in 
England, one that had been fought over during cen- 
turies, with the result that the liberty of the land was 
finally rescued and secured. He was enough of an 
Englishman to abhor the pretension, though he was 
exposed to all possible taunts and accusations. By the 
church it was supposed to be of the very first importance, 
so that Father White, of the Jesuits, says, " The fathers 
of the society warmly resisted this foul attempt, profess- 
ing themselves ready to shed their blood in defense of 
the faith and the liberty of the church, which firmness 
greatly enraged the secretary." What made them par- 
ticularly angry was that Secretary Lewger " summoned a 
parliament in Maryland, composed, with few exceptions, of 
heretics, and presided over by himself in the name of the 
Lord Baltimore," and attempted to pass laws covering 
the points at issue; the indignation being at the fact that 
heretics were called on to decide concerning the preroga- 
tives of the church. 

Lord Baltimore, however, persisted, notwithstanding 
the pressure brought to bear upon him: the statute of 
mortmain was declared to hold in the colony, the pro- 
vincial of the Jesuits at last sustained the Conditions of 
Plantation, which distinctly presented the proprietary's 
claims, the local members of the society receded from 
their position, and peace was restored. At one time, in 



90 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

1 64 1, the Jesuits were ordered to remove from the prov- 
ince, and authority was passed to another to take charge 
of Maryland. However, after the end sought for had 
been attained, the order for removal was rescinded and 
the priests continued their labors. 

Lord Baltimore, however, felt their conduct most 
keenly and bitterly. Writing to his brother, the gov- 
ernor of the colony, in 1642, he describes the Jesuit 
priests as ^^ full of shifts and devices," and says, "If all 
things that clergymen shall do upon these pretences 
should be accounted just and to proceed from God, lay- 
men were the basest slaves and most wretched creatures 
upon earth." 

Among all these diverse interests we can readily see 
that the position of Lord Baltimore was difficult. From 
the start the heretics, as the fathers called them, out- 
numbered the adherents of his own church, exciting in 
the latter, as we have seen in the case of the Jesuits, 
irritation and anxiety, for these had anticipated a freedom 
in this English dependency which they had found no- 
where else in the English dominions, and now they 
found themselves as jealously watched and restrained in 
the matter of ecclesiastical independence as they were in 
England itself. They possessed all the rights and privi- 
leges of worship, they were allowed to make converts 
from among the people of the province, as well as from 
among the Indians, they had every prerogative which 
we of this day think belongs to any body of Christians; 
but in the mighty claims which the Roman Church put 
forth, and which they thought a good Catholic, as Lord 
Baltimore and his secretary Lewger claimed to be, ought 
to recognize and allow as essentials of the faith, they 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 9 1 

found themselves shut off and put under the ban and 
required to leave the province. It was a heavy blow 
where none was expected. 

But if the proprietary had difficulty from this source, 
not less had he from another class, the Puritans, who 
began to come into the province only four or five years 
after this other question had been settled; for they antag- 
onized him from the time they began to acquire power. 
Whether Church of England people gave him trouble 
we do not know, nor whether any of the other bodies 
of Christians that may have been represented; for we 
are not acquainted with the religious convictions of the 
people in the earlier days of the colony. Much more is 
known of the matter later when the colony had increased 
in population. But take it all in all, masters and ser- 
vants, Puritans and Jesuits and nonconformists of various 
names, along with Churchmen — who under the charter 
itself had a certain recognition, as the ecclesiastical laws 
of England in the matter of consecrating churches were 
alone recognized as allowable — his lordship had abundant 
opportunity for showing his talent as a good pilot to 
guide his bark through troubled waters. At one time, 
just before the close of the first rebellion in 1644, he did 
feel that all was hopeless, and was about to abandon the 
effort to build up his colony. It was after the long con- 
tention with the Jesuits and when the Puritans had 
begun to come in and the province had been for two 
years in the hands of his enemies, who had done their 
utmost to rum it, and when his brother had been long 
a refugee in Virginia, — enough we would think to make 
a man turn away in disgust. His brother, however, 
came to the rescue, and not believing all was lost, by a 
manful effort restored peace and order once more. 



92 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

It will be wise for us to get a clue to the policy on 
which Lord Baltimore acted in the legislation of the 
province. Nor is that difhcult to find. He ^acted as 
every other practical man is found to act in his relations 
and dealings with his fellow-men, — ^by adaptation of 
means to ends as the occasions may arise. Theorists 
endeavor to force matters and to implant a new idea on 
an old system. But new ideas are possible only in a new 
system, and a new system is gotten only by agitation, 
or the training up of the common mind into readiness 
to receive it. New ideas are grafts that can be inserted 
only when there is vitality enough in the growing tree 
to lay hold on them and make them part of itself. 

And so of Lord Baltimore's policy. There is no evi- 
dence for believing that he was ever an agitator. He 
undertook a difficult work, the building up of a pro- 
vince, the first attempt of the kind within the English 
empire; and by the necessities of the case, as well as of 
his own desire, it was to be different from anything at 
that time in the world. A new principle was to be 
recognized in it which, with the one noble exception of 
Holland, had never been a part of any commonwealth, 
namely, that among inherent human rights is that of 
worshiping God in one's own way, without restraint 
from any source. But the acceptance of this principle 
as the corner-stone of the province, was not of his choice, 
but of necessity. His own faith, his own position, 
required the principle. It was either that or ruin. And 
this policy of adaptation he pursued with great skill. 

His first colonists were, doubtless, in harmony with 
him, however much they and he might differ in opinion 
in some matters. The twenty gentleman adventurers 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 93 

that left England were probably, most of them, of his 
own selection, men with whom he had been brought in 
close contact, and men of as good birth and education 
as himself. For that reason there was no conflict 
between them and him in the earlier efforts of the colony 
to secure a definite form of government. They dififered 
and expressed their dififerences, and he acquiesced. They 
passed a body of laws and he rejected them. He pro- 
posed a body of laws and they refused to receive them 
at his hand. They then considered them as of their 
own motion, passed such as they approved, and he con- 
firmed them. It was a way of discussing nnd estab- 
lishing a certain fundamental constitutional question by 
two parties living on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The 
men at the head of afifairs in the colony knew of the 
rights of Englishmen, and quietly asserted them, notwith- 
standing any charter privileges King Charles might 
attempt to bestow on a proprietary of his own creation. 

Of the two hundred laborers or servants that went to 
make up the first company, the noticeable thing is that 
the great majority of them were not of the proprietary's 
views in religion. This is vouched for by the provincial 
of the Jesuits, writing in 1642, who says of this first com- 
pany that "by far the greater part were heretics," — that 
is, of the whole number, for most of the twenty gentle- 
men, from all the evidence available, seem to have been 
Roman Catholics. And these laborers also appear to 
have been in harmony with Lord Baltimore, from the 
fact that the troubles that disturbed his colony were 
fomented by persons who did not belong to it. 

As legislating with these — for the laborers, having 
served out their time, became freemen and sat in the 



94 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Assembly — there seems to have been essential agreement 
between his lordship and them, and the laws that they 
made were in an eminent degree well fitted for all the 
needs of the infant commonwealth, for such Maryland 
was from the first. It was a body politic, with all the 
laws and processes essential for good order, and not 
merely a body of men controlled and directed by a 
power existing over themselves, over whose will and 
actions they might have no control. This had been the 
case in the earlier Virginia settlements. The proprietary 
did not readily acquiesce in the pretensions of the col- 
onists, so that the laws sent back by them in 1638 were 
not approved, though in the same year he sent word to 
his brother, the governor, authorizing him to assent and 
give immediate force to any laws that should be passed 
by the people, subject to his veto. 

It was at this time that a full organization of the 
province took place, for one of the laws passed provided 
for the 'calling of assemblies. Such assemblies were pro- 
vided for in the charter, the requirement being that all 
laws should be assented to by the people. This law pro- 
vided for the composition of the Assembly, and deter- 
mined that it should be composed of two classes, — those 
who should be chosen as burgesses, and those who 
should be summoned by his lordship's special writ. At 
first all freemen were expected to sit in the house and 
pass upon all laws, though any one unable to be present 
might delegate some one else to act as his proxy. After- 
wards we find some confusion, some persons being 
elected as delegates, and having as such but one vote, 
while others claimed the right to sit and vote in their 
own name, a man so holding his seat and representing 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 95 

only himself having as influential a voice as another man 
who might represent many. 

This was found, of course, not to work well. Also 
when the body was composed in part of those who rep- 
resented a number of voters and in part of those sum- 
moned by special writ, it was found not to be equitable, 
because those so summoned might very well defeat the 
will of the people, preventing even the expression of 
their voice; for no limit was placed upon the number 
that might be summoned. The inequality of this 
arrangement soon began to show itself, so that as early 
as 1642 the question of dividing the Assembly began to 
be considered, a change that was completed in 1650, 
when the two houses were created. In 1658 the right 
of appearing by proxy or in person finally ceased, and 
the two houses, as they existed till the downfall of the 
colonial system, came finally into existence. The upper 
house, however, differed very materially from the present 
State senate, where the members are elected in the same 
way as the members of the lower house; for according to 
the colonial plan the upper house was entirely the crea- 
tion of the proprietary, being composed of the governor 
and other colonial officers appointed by him. It repre- 
sented and protected his interests. It had the veto 
power over the action of the lower house, and could at 
any rate greatly retard any effort of that house looking 
to larger political freedom. Many were the contentions 
and the bitter words between the two bodies. It is to be 
said, however, that the lower house, having advanced a 
proposition or passed a law looking to the preservation 
or the extension of civil rights, never receded from it, but 
held on to it till success crowned their effort. 



9^ HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

In a session of 1639 the Assembly passed a series of 
laws of the highest importance, which gave a permanent 
color to the province and indicated the character of the 
people. The first law passed declared that Holy Church 
should have all her rights and liberties. Many claims 
have been set up on this law, as if it bestowed upon the 
church of the proprietary a certain peculiar eminence and 
assured it of many gifts. The law, however, meant 
nothing of the kind, but was only intended to be a rec- 
ognition of the Christian Church as in England estab- 
lished, the Church of England, and declared that as such 
she should possess whatever, as of her right, belonged to 
her. The phrase was copied exactly from the Magna 
Charta, which, as will be remembered, became the con- 
stitutional principle in England at a time when the 
Church of England, in the person of the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, and the State of England, by the barons 
assembled at Runnymede, were vindicating English 
liberties against the poltroon who would sacrifice them to 
the claims of the papal throne, an act for which the 
Archbishop received the severe condemnation of the 
Pope. The church has rights and always has had rights 
in glebes and endowments, rights to perform spiritual 
functions, rights to do her own work without being 
meddled with. This phrase, instead of being any assur- 
ance of special privileges to the church of Lord Balti- 
more, as has been claimed, was rather the assertion of 
the liberty of the church against any claims or preten- 
sions that he might set up ; in the same way as in Stephen 
Langton's day it was an assertion in Magna Charta 
against tyrannous claims that King John might make 
either to oppress the church or to betrav it. It was a 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 97 

common phrase in the earlier codes of laws, like some of 
the protestations found in the charters, where God's glory 
and the good of the heathen are assigned as the causes 
for enterprises beyond the seas, and Maryland lawmakers 
adopted it probably as belonging to the proprieties of a 
newly promulgated code. 

The great contest with the Jesuits was about breaking 
out, and we see what were esteemed by them the rights 
and liberties of the church. So far was this from being 
a submission to them, that within a short time they were 
ordered out of the colony. Also by the seventh section 
of this code we have the very rights for which the 
Jesuit fathers were ready "to shed their blood" dis- 
tinctly alienated to and claimed for the civil jurisdiction, 
— power, for instance, in matters testamentary, the proving 
of wills and granting letters of administration. The act, 
if it meant anything special at all, as applying to Mary- 
land, meant that men should be allowed to serve God 
in any way acceptable to themselves without let or hin- 
drance from the civil authority, a liberty that has 
existed up to this time. When the Jesuits attempted to 
extend their claims to a degree that could never be 
allowed to any body of Christians, they found themselves 
condemned by all but their own order. 

The first sections of the code were declarations of the 
rights of the church, the king, the proprietary and the 
people, assuring to each whatever in the common law 
of England belonged to them. It was English legis- 
lation in behalf of those who were liege subjects of the 
king of England. A notable thing is that at this time, 
when England had had no parliament for about ten 
years, Charles the First having determined to rule without 



98 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

one, the Assembly of Maryland passed, and Lord Balti- 
more approved, as he had before suggested, a law pro- 
viding for triennial sessions. 

Other matters of cardinal moment provided for by 
this code were the trial by jury, the right of all men to 
the common law of England, and that the inhabitants 
shall have all their rights and liberties according to the 
great charter of England. No exception was made of 
any, no privileges were granted to any, no ecclesiastical 
courts were set up for the trial of ecclesiastical persons 
or persons whose crimes were against the church or her 
laws. All persons, ecclesiastics, lords of manors, freemen, 
of whatever degree or calling, as well as all servants, 
were equal before the law, — the same laws for each and 
all. These great institutes are regarded as being for 
Maryland a constitution, in conformity with which all 
subsequent laws have had to be made. 



SIXTH LECTURE. 

Continuation: Legislation of the Province 
previous to 1689. 

I have said in the previous lecture that Lord Bahi- 
more's method of administration was on the principle of 
adaptation, which means that, recognizing that he had 
intelligent men to deal with who could not be intimidated 
by a great name, who knew they had rights and dared 
maintain them, who felt that in the eye of English law they 
were equal with the best blood of the land, — that recogniz- 
ing this, he accommodated himself to the pressure of cir- 
cumstances, and proposed such laws and approved such 
laws as he felt the will of the people and their needs 
required. And he showed his wisdom in this. The will of 
men is very much like the law of gravitation; it is going to 
have its way all the time. It may be modified, instructed, 
improved, but it cannot be ignored or annihilated. It may 
be made to operate along unfortunate lines, through the 
deficiency of instruction; it may be chained down by the 
dread or the exercise of tyrannical power; but it is there 
all the time, biding its opportunity, and when it attains it, 
exercises itself with a power commensurate with the pre- 
vious restraint. Lord Baltimore had the wisdom to recog- 
nize this fact, and accommodated himself to his circum- 
stances from the start, or as soon as, in his first conflict 
with the colonists, he learned that they had a will. He was 
but a young man then, but he had already the skill of a 
famous French statesman who was able to pass through 



100 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

many crises of fortune, and who said, in response to some 
one's astonishment at his good fortune, " I bend like the 
sapUng and do not break as the unyielding tree." 

To-day we come, in the consideration of the legislation 
of the colony, to the law which, probably, of all passed in 
all the colonies, during whatever period of their history, 
has been most talked of. I refer to the "Act Concerning 
Religion," passed in the year 1649; ^o^ i^ has been talked 
of and written about by statesmen, historians, orators, 
bishops, cardinals, priests, on both sides of the Atlantic. 
It has been the theme of college students, school anni- 
versaries, and has been represented as glorifying a great 
Christian body, as if it were the choicest gem that could 
adorn the brow; and for many years almost all men con- 
ceded any claims that were made to the honor which it 
was supposed to bestow. 

Now, accepting the proposition 4hat Lord Baltimore 
suggested and submitted the law, it is difificult to see how 
the law could, in the light of its true circumstances, 
bestow such honor upon him ; or again, granting that he 
is to be so honored, it is difficult, impossible, to discern 
how the personal honor that may be supposed to belong 
to him, is in any way reflected upon or adorns a whole 
body of Christians, that have not another like instance to 
show in all the legislation of any time and place which 
members of their church could or did control. The thirst 
for honor and the conscious necessity for it, must, indeed, 
be very great to bring one such instance into such great 
demand. 

As to religious toleration, or the right to the exercise 
of religious worship according to one's own craving or 
desire, more properly religious liberty, — that is a question 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 10 1 

that arises late in the history of any people. While all 
men have conscience, yet conscience toward God comes 
in late in the development of man. Religion itself in the 
beginning is a superstition, a dread of something in 
nature behind the mere natural phenomena; and the acts 
of worship, not worthy of being called so, are efforts at 
placating this something, or diverting its malevolent 
power from one's self. Even later in life, in all nations 
except one, which was taught by the Almighty a definite 
notion of sin, I mean the Jews, religion did not enter 
into the province of the conscience. Men had a regard 
for one another's rights. There were definite laws regu- 
lating mutual conduct, and these laws were fortified by, 
if they were not the outcome of, the sense of justice in the 
relations of man with man. But conscience toward God 
was an unknown quality; it was too high an idea, too 
difficult a conception. Religion was made up of cere- 
monies, sacrifices, sometimes attractive for beauty, some- 
times hideous and brutal. St. Paul, in writing to the 
Romans, touches upon this question, and referring to 
things done in the name of God, speaks of them as done 
in secret, of which it is a shame even to speak. That was 
in Rome and in Greece, centers of western education and 
refinement; but it was even worse, infinitely worse, in the 
great center of eastern refinement, Babylon. Even to this 
day, in some lands where ignorance abounds, in the very 
midst of a Christian priesthood, religion is very often only 
a matter of forms and ceremonies, an observance of rules, 
an obedience to institutions, and conscience is unheard of. 
As men are cultivated, however, as religion becomes a 
personal matter and not merely a social institution, con- 
science develops; and when it does, it becomes stronger 



102 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

than any other power, even than the will itself. Though 
such a distinction is hardly legitimate, in that with an 
aroused conscience the will is always in alliance. But it 
is this mighty force, conscience toward God, calling forth 
all the rectitude and all the loyalty and all the devotion 
of the human heart; and the heart means human energy. 

And whenever it has arisen into being it has wrought 
commotion and discord in the world. It has struggled 
against the bonds with which men have endeavored to 
bind it, and it has never rested till it has broken the bonds 
and felt itself free. This w^as at the bottom of all the 
turmoil and confusion that, beginning with the Reforma- 
tion, continued in England till the reign of William and 
Mary, nor even then was the principle fully established. 
It was at the bottom, also, of the commotions that dis- 
turbed Europe through the same period, whether the 
Huguenots of France were the occasion, or the Wal- 
densians of Savoy, or the Bohemians and others of the 
Austrian dominion and of the German empire. Con- 
science would not, could not yield, and battles were 
fought and provinces desolated, in the futile attempt to 
break down her spirit; and in the end all that was done 
was to spill the blood of countless multitudes of men and 
women and children, fill the land with cries and tears, and 
at last acknowledge the freedom of conscience. Con- 
science is the highest expression of the human mind and 
character, 

A curious feature of the whole matter is that good and 
conscientious men, who would themselves have died for 
their conscience, have in innumerable instances been those 
who would deny this high prerogative of freedom to 
others. For it is not the ungodly, but the godly who have 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. IO3 

most frequently, in our Christian period, persecuted others 
for reUgion's sake. Torquemada, who estabhshed the 
Spanish Inquisition that wrought in his day, and for cen- 
turies afterwards, such horrid butchery, was a rigorously 
upright and devoted man. The men of the days of the 
Commonwealth, and before, in England, who put popery 
and prelacy equally under the ban, were very righteous 
men The men who in the reign of Elizabeth consented 
to the death of those who dissented from the established 
faith, were sincere in their belief and practice. The mis- 
fortune has been that such men felt themselves endowed 
by God with authority over another's faith, and because 
such would not surrender the prerogative of believing 
and worshiping according as their own consciences might 
prescribe, they were condemned to the stake or the 

scaffold. ., 

Often, also, the party that had called loudest for reli- 
gious freedom and the right to serve God in their own 
way were the first, when power came into their own 
hands, to push to extremity those who differed from them 
in belief or practice. That was the case in England m the 
days of the Civil War. When the Independents were suc- 
cessful in the field, Cromwell very plainly intimated to 
the Presbvterian Parliament, that such men should be 
allowed to worship God according to the light which 
they possessed; and yet when they came into power, no 
man ever looked with more wrathful scorn upon those 
who would follow the old ways in religion. So m Mas- 
sachusetts. The Plymouth Brethren fled to Holland be- 
cause they were denied religious freedom in England, but 
no sooner were they firmly fixed in their own colony than 
popery, prelacy, and every form of dissent were rigidly 



I04 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

suppressed as far as in their power. In Maryland it was 
the same. Puritans sought asylum in Maryland, coming 
from Virginia because they were no longer tolerated there; 
and yet, as soon as they were here, they began a protest 
which became more and more violent against the Church 
of the proprietary, as well as against the Church of Eng- 
land, which in Virginia had repressed them. 

Such was the experience the world over. He who cries 
out most lustily when he is down, will be the most deaf to 
cries when he gets on top. Freedom of conscience, the 
ability to act consistently upon the principle, that while 
religion is to bless by its association the civil institutions 
of the state, it is to be regarded as independent of, a differ- 
ent order, organization, autonomy from the state, is, may 
be, the last thing to be achieved in the progress of man- 
kind, — the recognition that, while the state exists to secure 
the welfare and the peace of the community, and to enable 
men to work "out here the highest destiny that is con- 
sistent with the good of their fellows, — for all the higher 
functions of their nature, as regards their soul and spirit, 
as regards their eternal welfare, and their relations with 
that higher community which has Christ as its head — 
with this the state has nothing whatever to do. This has 
nowhere been entirely achieved yet, and in some places, 
as concerns this matter, darkness broods vv^ith pestilential 
wing. When it shall be universally recognized, then, and 
not till then, will Christ's kingdom be established on earth. 

When the Act of 1649, concerning religion, was passed, 
very little had come to be known concerning this funda- 
mental principle in the true economy of the race. As we 
have seen, when the Independents were soldiers, and had 
not yet come to be directors of the affairs of England, 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. IO5 

they claimed the appHcation of the principle to them- 
selves. Like as it is with men generally, when pursuing 
their own ends, all that they asked was " to be let alone."' 
It was very different when the positions were reversed. 
Some few men, as Sir Thomas More, had advanced the 
truth, but it was rather the adumbration of the philosopher 
than the principle of the lawmaker. He was one of the 
most conscientious men of his age, and possibly of any 
age. 

The man, however, who stands out gloriously before 
the world as the practical representative of this great truth, 
is not Lord Baltimore by any means, but a man who lived 
many years before he was born, a man who made 
his land to be the refuge of the persecuted, and who 
insisted that all should enjoy the equal privilege of com- 
ing before God, each in his own way. I speak of Wil- 
liam the Silent of Holland. Like Cecilius Calvert, he 
was a convert, only it was out of the Church of Rome to 
the Calvinistic faith. Also, he lived in a day when per- 
secution was rife against the church and faith of his adop- 
tion; for in his time the awful Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew took place, the anticipation of which the French 
king had communicated to him, for he only became a 
Calvinist in 1573. Holland also in his day suffered the 
last extremities of torture, both at the hand of Philip of 
Spain and his minister, the Duke of Alva, and of the 
Inquisition. Again he had the power in his hand to exer- 
cise reciprocal vengeance, and a word from him would 
have drawn the sword against the Roman communion. 

But instead, whether on the one side against the Roman 
Catholics, or on the other against the Anabaptists, whom 
all men then spoke against, his word was one of peace. 



I06 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Let them alone, was at one time his command when an 
attempt had been made upon the Roman CathoUc. " We 
declare to you," he said in 1578, "that you have no right 
to trouble yourselves with any man's conscience, so long 
as nothing is done to cause private or public scandal. We 
therefore expressly ordain that you desist from molesting 
these Baptists." As early as 1576, the States General, 
through his influence, granted not merely freedom of con- 
science, but freedom of worship to all denominations, a 
privilege and a right that meant all that it claimed to be. 
Here, therefore, if any man is to be glorified, is the one. 
Rising supremely over all circumstances, early education, 
the sense of great personal and national outrage, and all 
the prejudices and accepted rules of his own day, he 
declared and illustrated the great principle with all clear- 
ness and fulness. At the same time he was bold, fearless, 
chivalrous, and distinguished among the great soldiers of 
the day. Religious freedom at his hand meant that he 
had grasped definitely the cardinal principle of human 
freedom. His conversion also testifies the man; for it 
was the surrender of great opportunities, for exposure, 
danger, and at last assassination; for, as is well known, a 
price was set upon his head, and he fell by the assassin's 
hand in 1584. 

Let us now look at the circumstances under which the 
law in Maryland was passed. And first of all we must 
remember what we have seen, that the years preceding 
1649 were years of trouble and confusion in the province. 
Lord Baltimore's government had been entirely over- 
thrown, and his brother, the governor, driven to Virginia, 
where he had been compelled to remain about two years. 
The condition of things had become so desperate that 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 10/ 

Lord Baltimore felt that further effort to preserve his 
colony was useless, or that it was not worth the struggle 
that had to be bestowed upon it. His. brother, however, 
who knew all the circumstances, thought differently, and 
made, as we have seen, a successful attempt to recover it. 
But what was at the bottom of this difficulty, and why 
were Claiborne and Ingle able so easily to overturn the 
government and retain so long possession of the pro- 
vince? It was, doubtless, because they reached some 
point in the people's minds in which they were antagon- 
istic to the ruling powers, and that point was in the matter 
of religion. Even of the first company that came over in 
the Ark and the Dove, the pronounced majority was of 
the Protestant faith. Even among the "gentleman adven- 
turers " there were some of this faith, as is indicated by 
the "Instructions" sent out with the colony; for by these 
Lord Baltimore provided for the sending of deputies to 
the Governor of Virginia as well as to Claiborne, to placate 
them, and he also provided that such deputies should be 
of the Church of England. As none but a "gentleman " 
was fitted for that office, there must have been some of 
the Protestant faith even among the chosen few. Thomas 
Cornwaleys, the most influential and capable man 
of the province, has been said by some to have been a 
Protestant, and certainly he was of good Church of 
England stock, and his descendants were of that faith. 
But of himself not enough is known to lift the question 
out of the realm of doubt. 

We are not, however, left in doubt as to the religious 
views of the first colonists. The majority of them from 
the start were not of his lordship's faith, as we learn 
from the Jesuit fathers themselves, who commanded all 



I08 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

the information; for the provincial of the order in Eng- 
land, writing to Rome in 1642, declared that the affair 
was surrounded with many and great difficulties, for in 
leading the colony to Maryland by far the greater part 
were heretics. Father White, it is true, wrote, soon after 
coming into the colony, that they had been able to make 
various converts; but in 1641 he again wrote that "three, 
parts of the people in four at least are heretics." It is 
in the same communication quoted above, from the Eng- 
lish provincial to Rome, that we find Secretary Lewger 
is said to have summoned a parliament " composed, with 
few exceptions, of heretics." This was probably the 
Assembly of 1640, as he is referring to the troubles 
Lord Baltimore was having with the Jesuit fathers. As 
the Secretary was compelled to summon all the freemen, 
it indicates that the Protestants greatly preponderated. 

And as it was then, so it continued all the way along. 
The ratio in favor of the Protestant majority always con- 
tinued increasing. This abundance of evidence shows. 
In 1676 Charles, the third Lord Baltimore, who had just 
returned from Maryland, declared that the nonconformists 
outnumbered the Churchmen and Roman Catholics three 
to one, and that the Churchmen were more numerous 
than the Roman Catholics. This would make the num- 
ber of these last relatively very small, a tenth or twelfth 
of the whole body of the people, a ratio that was declared 
to be true a few years after this time. It is a notable 
thing that the Roman Catholics, for whose relief the 
colony has been said by some to have been created, and 
who had, under the charter, the liberty of leaving Eng- 
land for the colony, do not seem to have come. They 
were denied the privileges of citizenship at home, the 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. IO9 

full exercise of their mode of worship was a felony, they 
were suspected, they had every inducement held out to 
make the province of Maryland a retreat and to enjoy all 
the blessings of liberty, but they did not come. The 
few that did, were soon lost in the preponderating num- 
bers of another faith. An inexact manifestation of the 
two great classes, Protestant and Roman Catholic, is 
given by a return made under a levy of 1667; for while 
the Roman Catholic counties, St. Mary's and Charles, 
where, however, there w^ere many Protestants, returned 
together one hundred and twenty-one men, the other 
counties of the province, where the inhabitants were 
almost exclusively Protestants, gave two hundred and 
eighty-eight. In fact, almost the whole Roman Catholic 
immigration was in the beginning of the colony, and 
their settlements were confined to the region first 
occupied. 

And Lord Baltimore recognized this state of things. 
Whether he was chagrined or not at the fewness of those 
coming over, we do not know. It was anticipated, evi- 
dently, from the Jesuit papers, that a Roman Catholic 
settlement was to be made, and provision was made for 
inevitable objections that would be raised, about their 
sympathy with the Spaniards, about the danger to the 
Puritan colonies in the North and to the Church of Eng- 
land colony in the South, from the contiguity of their 
Roman Catholic settlement. Also the bringing out of 
Jesuit fathers only, while so many of the people were 
Protestants, helps to show the animus. But the Roman 
Catholics, oppressed and disfranchised in England, did 
not come. Why, it would be hard to say. The colony 
became Protestant from the start, with a Roman Catholic 



no HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

over-lord and a Roman Catholic governor and council. 
This taking of the officers of the colony from among a 
small minority of the citizens, was a piece of bad policy 
on the part of the proprietary. 

But in 1648 Lord Baltimore recognized the true state 
of things and changed h^'s policy. He took the local 
administration out of the hands of the Roman Catholics 
and put it in the hands of Protestants, choosing as the 
governor and the majority of the cormcil persons of that 
faith. He did not do this because he loved to do it, 
for he had been pursuing the contrary policy for fourteen 
years, in spite of the murmurs and contentions that it 
had excited, the government having been restored on its 
old basis after its re-establishment in 1646. He did it 
because, evidently, it was now a necessity. Even his 
faithful and liberal-minded secretary, Lewger, who had 
acted such good part for him in the difficulties he had 
had with the Jesuit fathers, and who was a man after his 
own heart, was displaced, and his, along with other offices, 
turned over to the heretics. He was wise in so doing, 
and he was consistent, on the ground that his purpose 
had been to establish an English colony, not as a refuge 
for the Roman Catholics, but where religious freedom 
was to be observed and enjoyed by all. He had never 
asserted anything else, only he had been inconsistent in 
drawing a religious line in the matter of administration. 

But now he changed all this, and Stone as governor, 
and Hatton as secretary, and Price as muster-general, 
and Vaughan as commander of Kent, were given com- 
missions. The oath which he required, gives us light 
upon his motive. He saw it was in the power, and it 
might be in the pleasure, of the Protestant majority to 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. Ill 

restrain and persecute the members of his church, for 
whom up to this time he had been able to secure immu- 
nity by the character of the men whom he had appointed 
in the province. But now he must create for them 
another defense, and while he would appoint men who 
had no religious sympathy for his own people, he would 
secure for them a sufficient protection. 

That is the meaning of the oath which he exacted of 
the governor and council : " I do further swear that I 
will not by myself nor any person, directly nor indirectly, 
trouble, molest or discountenance any person whatsoever, 
in the said province, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, 
and in particular no Roman Catholic, for or in respect of 
his or her religion, nor his or her free exercise thereof, 
within the said province." Of the governor it was also 
required that in bestowing the offices of the colony no 
distinction should be made for religion's sake, and also 
that he would forbid any persecution for the sake of 
religion; and that if without his consent and privity any 
person professing to believe in Jesus Christ were perse- 
cuted merely for or in respect of his or her religion, that 
he would relieve and protect such person, and punish the 
ofifender. 

This indicates a revolution, and it was not made with- 
out cause; it had become a great necessity. Lord Balti- 
more was not a very strict Roman Catholic as the Jesuit 
fathers counted strictness; that is, he would not have the 
spiritual fathers trespass in their spiritual claims upon 
his civil rights and prerogatives, but would confine papal 
rights, as was said by Lewger, in foro conscientice. At 
the same time he would do his utmost to preserve the 
peace of the colony, and to secure to the Roman Catholics, 



112 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

what Up to this time he had been able, almost from the 
beginning, to command for them. Power to this end 
was slipping out of his hand, and he secured all that was 
possible for their relief and protection. This was in 
August, 1648, and during the winter that succeeded, the 
draft of the "Act Concerning Religion" was brought 
over, and was submitted to the Assembly the beginning 
of the following April. 

It will be remembered also that at this time the royal 
cause was utterly prostrated in England, that the king 
who had bestowed the charter, with all its extensive 
franchises, upon Lord Baltimore, was now in the hands 
of his enemies, who were giving no uncertain indications 
that their purpose was the utter overthrow of the mon- 
archy. Besides, as regards the colony, a condition of 
Governor Stone's appointment had been that he would 
bring into the province five hundred colonists; who did 
come, and whom Lord Baltimore doubtless expected to 
come, out of Virginia, a colony of Puritan noncon- 
formists, who both would increase the Protestant majority, 
and probably infuse into it a spirit of vindictiveness 
which seemed to belong to their form of faith, and which 
had been fostered by their treatment in Virginia. 

These are the circumstances, therefore, that led up to 
the Act of 1649; and while the Act was good, and the 
principles embodied in it those which the world now 
delights to honor (only the world goes a good deal 
farther now than that act went), yet the circumstances do 
not justify the admirers of Lord Baltimore in offering 
him as a great and singular hero. He was a wise states- 
man, he was under definite prejudices, as every man will 
be, but he sought, and saw the best means of attaining, 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. II 3 

peace for his province. In the revolution that had 
become necessary in the administration, he secured a 
perpetuation of the peace poHcy that had governed him 
in the past, doing this not only by means of the officers 
appointed, but also by the law that was to control the 
administration. 

The advisability of the law is seen in the fact that 
afterwards, when the Puritan sentiment, in the Claiborne- 
Bennett rebellion, attained for a time the control, this 
law was annulled, and another, though called by the 
same title, was passed in its stead, but which put both 
the religion of Lord Baltimore and that of the Church of 
England under the ban. The original act, however, was 
afterwards restored and continued in force till the Prot- 
estant revolution, when the Roman Catholic faith was 
again put under interdict. 

Let us now look at the law itself. And first, of the 
intention, as announced by Lord Baltimore in the com- 
mission that accompanied the body of laws submitted, of 
which this was the first. The laws were proposed to him 
for "the good and quiet settlement of the colony and 
people." It was, in other words, a peace-preserving 
measure in its intention as well as in its terms, a pro- 
vision against the oncoming times of turbulence which 
Lord Baltimore apprehended, and which did come within 
the next three years. Also it will be observed that it 
was the joint act of the proprietary and the people, so 
that neither party could claim exclusively what merit 
belonged to the passage of the law. The law, he says, 
"was proposed to him," by whom we are not told, and 
hei approved the suggestion as wise and discreet, and well 
suited to give a good and quiet settlement of the colony 
and people. 



114 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

The Assembly was then, and had been for ten years, 
composed of a large majority of Protestants, and the 
merit was more theirs, as preserving protection and 
religious freedom for a small minority, than it was his, 
who felt himself protector of that minority; though it 
is true, neither could do anything without the other. 
Besides, Lord Baltimore was not a stalwart Roman 
Catholic, however great his prejudices might be, but of 
that English type of mind that, while he could worship 
only in a Roman Catholic sanctuary, and accept the 
dogmas of the Roman creed, could trample under foot 
even the great papal bull In coena Domini, when this 
bull proposed doctrines that were inconsistent with his 
prerogatives, — a kind of provincial Henry VIII. in the 
assertion of his temporal supremacy; for all his legis- 
lation, as well as his private utterances, spurned the pre- 
tensions of the Roman Catholic fathers to the peculiar 
privileges of their order; which in other times they had 
claimed in England, and which in other less-favored 
lands they were exercising at this time. 

Whether the English Catholic Lord Baltimore, swelling 
with indignation, and reviling the persons of the pre- 
sumptuous priests, is to be taken as the representative of 
the Roman Church, or those priests themselves who 
vilified the representative and agent of Lord Baltimore, 
who for him resisted their attempts to establish an eccle- 
siastical oligarchy in Maryland, is a question that is very 
easily answered. We may bestow praise upon Lord Bal- 
timore as a wise and plastic statesman, whose judgment 
could be swayed by the necessity of the times; but we 
shall have to leave the church in the hands of the Jesuit 
fathers, as they far better present its tone and spirit. 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. Ilg 

The first section of the Act is Draconic in its severity, 
and indicates that however much the men that framed 
and passed it, may have been disposed to grant toleration 
in the matter of reUgion, they were not disposed to grant 
any whatsoever in the matter of irreUgion. The whole 
idea of religious freedom was still in swaddling bands; 
for religious freedom takes the whole question out of the 
realm of civil administration, and means that a man 
shall believe as much and as little as he pleases. But in 
that day the majority, simply by toleration, graciously 
extended to all persons the privilege of believing, pro- 
vided they believed aright according to the judgment of 
the majority. And so by this first section, if any one 
denied the Saviour to be the Son of God, or denied the 
Holy Trinity, or the Godhead of any of the three Persons 
of the Trinity, or the Unity of the Godhead, he should be 
"punished with death, and confiscation or forfeiture of 
all his or her land or goods to the lord proprietary and 
his heirs." 

The second section is also restrictive, in that it pro- 
vides that if any persons "shall use or utter any reproach- 
ful words or speeches concerning the Blessed Virgin 
Mary, the Mother of our Saviour, or the Holy Apostles 
or Evangelists, or any of them," shall be fined, and if he 
cannot pay the fine or will not, then he shall be whipped 
and imprisoned. For a second ofifense the fine was 
doubled, with whipping and imprisonment as an alter- 
native; and for a third ofifense the punishment was for- 
feiture of lands and goods and perpetual banishment from 
the colony. 

The third section was also restrictive, in that it forbade 
persons to call one another names, as heretic, schismatic, 



Il6 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

idolater, Puritan, Presbyterian, Independent, Popish 
priest, Jesuit, Jesuited papist, Lutheran, Calvinist, Ana- 
baptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, 
Separatist, or any other name or term in a reproachful 
manner, and the penalty was in this case fine. There was 
nothing very heinous in some of these names. They are 
good old honest names, and exactly describe what they 
were meant to indicate. The enactment of such a law 
shows how sensitive was the public feeling and how 
keenly anxious Lord Baltimore was to avoid every occa- 
sion of offense, and also it shows that the Act was a peace- 
preserving measure, and not the lofty and disinterested 
act of some one who had grasped, before his time, the 
great principle and postulate of human freedom in the 
realm of conscience. 

The fourth section provides against Sabbath-breaking, 
and forbids uncivil and disorderly recreation, also work- 
ing on Sunday when "absolute necessity doth not re- 
quire," and the punishment was to be fine or whipping. 

The next, or fifth section, is the one that has called 
forth so much comment and so great commendation in 
America and in England, in the church and also in the 
state. It begins with the proposition : that " Whereas the 
inforcing of the conscience in the matters of religion 
hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous conse- 
quence in those commonwealths where it hath been 
practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable govern- 
ment of this province and the better to preserve mutual 
love and unity among the inhabitants here." As regards 
the first declaration about dangerous consequences, that 
was exemplified on all hands. Archbishop Laud had 
attempted it in England, the Roman Catholic princes had 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. 11/ 

attempted it on the Continent, Charles the Ninth had 
attempted it in France, the Presbyterians were now 
attempting it in England, the awful Inquisition was at 
this time attempting it everywhere, wherever the Roman 
Church could force it upon the civil government, and the 
Thirty Years' War, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
and the rack and the stake, and universal gloom had been 
the consequences; surely dangerous enough. 

But the whole animus of the law, legitimate but not 
exalted, is expressed in the words next following, " for 
the more quiet and peaceable government of this prov- 
ince and the better to preserve nmtual love and unity 
amongst the inhabitants here." The whole is a matter 
of policy, good poHcy, it is true, but poUcy: the more 
quiet and peaceable government. No recognition of a 
man's inherent and inalienable right to worship God 
according to the dictates of a man's own conscience. He 
must profess to believe in Jesus Christ; so far must he be 
orthodox. A Jew might be placed under the ban; a 
Unitarian was liable to be punished with death and con- 
fiscation of his goods, and his family left in poverty, the 
goods to go to the proprietary. There was no pro- 
tection for such. By the first clause of the Act they 
were liable to punishment, and by this clause they might 
be molested, disturbed at pleasure. 

And this is all there is of this much-vaunted law. 
Surely it must be because of a general poverty of claims 
that so much is made of this one instance. There was 
no religion in it whatever, no recognition of inherent 
human rights, only a wise adaptation to an emergency 
by a shrewd and observant man, who felt that the whole 
drift of the times and the power of numbers were against 



1X8 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

him and the general policy of his administration. He on 
the one side and the colonists on the other, each of free 
will considered the other, and united to establish by 
statute what had been from the beginning the common 
practice of the province, a practice always rendered neces- 
sary by imperative circumstances. 

It was a useful law, too, for it provided a sufficient 
answer in after-days to the charges made against the 
succeeding Lord Baltimore, that the Roman Catholics 
were unduly favored. He could point to this law as 
establishing the administration of the colony. The Puri- 
tans did not like it, so that when afterwards in 1654 they 
had gotten control of the colony they annulled it, passing 
a new law, in which both papists and prelatists, all persons 
but themselves, were denied its benefits. The law, how- 
ever, was renewed when the provincial government was 
restored to Lord Baltimore. 

Maryland has always occupied an honorable position 
among the commonwealths, not only of America, but of 
the world. We shall see hereafter the treatment the 
Roman Catholics received after the Protestant revolution, 
treatment wholly unjustifiable and wholly unnecessary 
from any point of view, and so far Maryland's record is 
blameworthy. But remembering the treatment of the 
Puritans in Virginia, and of the papists, prelatists, witches 
and Quakers in New England, and then observing what 
her conduct was, we can but be astonished at the measure 
of liberty she attained; for notwithstanding the universal 
belief in witchcraft and the tortures to which suspected 
persons were subjected in England as well as in America, 
it is surprising how free her record is. And as concerns 
Quakers, she was among the very first to accommodate 



THE LEGISLATION OF THE PROVINCE. II9 

her laws to their pecuHar idiosyncrasies, and to so frame 
her rules of procedure that they might live within her 
borders in peace and enjoy the privileges of citizenship. 
Her record is honorable, not, however, because she was 
faultless according to the standard of this day; for in 
those earlier days she had much to learn and much to 
unlearn; but honorable because in all the great social 
questions, no State or Territory has occupied higher 
ground than she, and because, also, in the great develop- 
ment that took place in both church and state matters 
through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, her 
position was always at the front. 



SEVENTH LECTURE. 

The Protestant Revolution. 

We have seen that after the year 1659 the troubles of 
Maryland ceased, that is, those caused by the Protestant 
faction that had been showing its spirit from time to time 
since the year 1644. Its motives, it is true, were not 
always avowedly religious, yet the probability is that that 
was the string on which they played to arouse the ani- 
mosities of the people. After 1659, however, when 
Cromwell recognized the claims of Lord Baltimore and 
required that his province be restored, comparative peace 
reigned, hardly disturbed at all by the agitation and com- 
plaints that were heard from the lower house of the 
Assembly, presenting what they esteemed grievances. 
And this lasted till the year 1689. Then, however, it was 
broken, with very lamentable results for the proprietary. 

Between these dates the first of those navigation acts 
was passed, by which it was sought more and more 
to bind the colonies to the mother country by unjust 
exactions, restraining the freedom of commerce, shutting 
up the ports of the world to colonial enterprise, forbid- 
ding foreign vessels to frequent colonial ports, preventing 
the building of ships. England, that at first neglected 
her colonies, doing nothing for their planting, but leav- 
ing everything to private enterprise, and allowing them 
to languish, and probably astonished at last that they 
continued to exist at all; afterwards, when the colonies 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 121 

had grown by private thrift, intelligence and energy, 
sought in every way to make them minister to her pros- 
perity and aggrandisement. And so she pursued the 
policy indicated. Fortunately for her, she began the 
policy when the colonies were still comparatively weak 
and the loss from the navigation act but little felt. Had 
she waited till the colonial commerce had expanded to 
large proportions the rebellion against her colonial sys- 
tem would have been sharp and dangerous. As it was, 
Massachusetts, that never had any love for the house of 
Stuart, and always fostered a republican love of having 
her own way, was forever irritating Charles the Second 
by her evasions of the law and by her shrewd justifica- 
tion of her conduct. 

The year 1689, however, was big with results for Mary- 
land. It will be remembered that in 1688 James the 
Second had been compelled by his fears, which were only 
too well founded, to flee from England and find his 
refuge with the king of France. And this he had to do 
because he had violated the constitution of England, and 
introduced principles into the executive administration, 
and practices into religion, that were dreaded and hated 
by the English people; for he had attempted to nullify 
the laws of England by his own proclamation founded 
upon what he supposed his royal prerogative, and by 
this means he had sought to introduce persons and 
practices into the Church of England which the people 
had cast oflf one hundred and fifty years before. 

France had such a royal government at this time as 
James desired, for when in the early days of Louis XIV. 
the Council had attempted to consider one of his commu- 
nications, he quickly informed them that his edicts were 



122 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

submitted not for consideration but to be registered. 
James desired such regal independence as that. Louis 
succeeded, and the results of his absolute tyranny were 
found in the French Revolution one hundred and fifty 
years later. The people, not having courage to resist 
him then, had to rise in their power and crush out entirely 
his system and his successors afterwards. The English 
people, however, did their crushing at once, with the 
result that James and the abominable principles he 
attempted to establish, were forever ruled out of England. 
Now this agitation in the English world of course 
extended to the colonies. The strong feelings that were 
excited at home were excited also here, while the frequency 
of communication kept the colonies posted as to the 
progress of events. The ferment of feeling was known 
and sympathized with, while the hope of relief in the 
coming over of William the Stadtholder, from Holland, 
was soon known in the colonies. Maryland was pecu- 
liarly circumstanced in the matter, for she was the only 
one of all the colonies whose proprietary or other chief 
administrator was of the same church with James. This 
fact had immense influence in exciting the interest of the 
people of Maryland in the progress of afifairs; for though 
Charles Lord Baltimore was known to be wise and con- 
siderate, and the people had from time to time declared 
their appreciation of him and of the method he had pur- 
sued in the government of the province, yet because he 
was of the same faith and practice with his royal master 
he now became the subject of suspicion, and they were 
ready to believe anything that the wildest imagination 
could invent. Outrages were reported, tyrannical con- 
duct was charged, and deadly intentions were said to be 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 1 23 

meditated, if not by Lord Baltimore, at least by those 
who were of the same faith with him in the colony. 
Commendations by a people of their rulers, however, are 
not always to be taken at their face value; heavy dis- 
counts have often to be allowed. While the people were 
commending Lord Baltimore they were also approach- 
ing James with fulsome eulogy, congratulating him upon 
the birth of his son, wishing long life and peace; yet as 
soon as might be they rejoiced in the downfall of James, 
and did their utmost to overthrow their own proprietary. 

Unfortunately for Lord Baltimore in this emergency, 
when William and Mary were established on the throne, 
and their title had been officially proclaimed, and they 
stood forth before England and the world as the defenders 
of the Protestant faith. Lord Baltimore, through no 
fault of his own, but through the untoward death of his 
messenger, was very slow in proclaiming them. The 
result of all these things was The Protestant Revolution. 

What was this? The records of the province are at 
fault here, for there is a gap reaching down to the year 
1692. But from what is known we learn that, like as in 
all such periods of transition, when men are excited by 
any cause, the citizens of the province bound themselves 
in an association to break up the government of Lord 
Baltimore, and to bring about the establishment of Mary- 
land as a royal colony, with the king occupying the 
relation to the colony that up to this time the proprietary 
had held. The object of the association was to agitate, 
and this they did, preying without doubt upon the people's 
fears, denouncing to Marylanders the same condition 
which James had attempted to bring about in Endand. 
They did this by reporting among the thinly settled dis- 



124 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

tricts of one part of the province outrages as committed 
by the reHgious friends of the proprietary in another part; 
for owing to the difficulty of communication and the 
small degree of intercourse, it was easy to start an alarm 
which it would take a long while to allay. Indian out- 
rages also were reported, and the association of the 
papists with the Indians in conspiracy. All such fears 
were the more readily excited by the horrible atrocities 
which in 1685 had followed upon the Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, when four hundred thousand French 
Protestants, solely for their religion, were driven forth in 
the name of religion — the Roman — from house and 
home and country, dragooned to death, or stripped 
of all property and sent forth penniless. 

All such things were esteemed possible in that day, 
the times were rife with them, and if they were not done 
by Lord Baltimore, his abstention from them was, to tlie 
minds of the people of the province, an accident of his 
disposition or of his circumstances. The spirit was 
believed to be of the essence of his church and liable to 
show itself in every member. We may see differently 
now, but there were many circumstances then to justify 
apprehension. For Lord Baltimore as a man the people 
might have great respect; but for Lord Baltimore's 
church, and for him as a member of it, the people not 
only had no respect, but great fears and anxieties. This 
probably suggests the leading cause of the Protestant 
Revolution., 

The revolution consisted in getting the government 
of the colony out of Lord Baltimore's hands into 
those of the king and queen; and the reason why the 
people sought to make the change was that they had 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 12$ 

faith in the one and they had not faith in the other. 
When the matter was brought before the king he con- 
sented to the desire of the people, and the government 
passed over to his hands. All Lord Baltimore's private 
rights, however, in the property of the province, were fully 
respected. The soil was his, the quit-rents or ground- 
rents were his, manors held for himself and vacant lands 
were his. The port dues were his also, and one-half of 
the tobacco dues, or duties on tobacco exported. When 
the revolution took place, the people claimed that these 
exactions went with the govemmetit, and were not to be 
accorded to the proprietary as a private right. They had 
been granted by acts of Assembly, and were no part of 
the proprietary's charter prerogatives. The king, how- 
ever, after a hearing of the case, decided in favor of 
Lord Baltimore. Private rights were in this way gen- 
erously respected, the king acting as Lord Baltimore's 
friend and restraining the impetuosity of the people. 

But all the functions of government passed out of his 
hands. The governor was appointed by the king, and all 
the officers of the colony. All laws had to be submitted 
to the king for his approval. The courts ran in his 
name; the assemblies were called under his writ. All 
the functions of government were performed by him. 
It was a great change, it is true, but whether it was such 
that the people who lived quietly on their several farms 
could observe it, is a question. It gave them, however, 
a sense of greater security, for now they could have 
faith in the officials of the province, which they seem not 
to have had before. Beside that we can feel that a 
province of the English kingdom should be under the 
king of England. There was a fitness in it. And doubt- 



126 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

less they had some such feeUng in that day. Certainly 
by the charter allegiance to the king was saved, and all 
the residents of the province were declared to be liege 
subjects of the king. But yet the proprietary was " abso- 
lute lord," and fealty was pledged to him, and the king 
in all current administration, was not known. 

We of this day have exceedingly little respect for 
kingly government ; but for feudal government and subor- 
dination, as of hereditary right to a fellow-subject, we 
have far less respect. It would be an anachronism now, 
and it was becoming rapidly so at that time. The be- 
heading of Charles the First and the abolishment of the 
House of Lords, the voluntary recall of Charles the 
Second, and the practical expulsion of James the Second, 
were successively fatal blows to feudalism; and the people 
of Maryland doubtless felt a relief when the feudal over- 
lordship was done away with. It is true, it was in some 
degree restored again after 171 5, but it never became 
what it had been before. Royal and parliamentary inter- 
vention in the aflfairs of Maryland, as well as of the other 
colonies, was far more frequent and direct after the 
restoration of the proprietary government than it had 
been before. 

The thing most frequently spoken of in connection 
with the royal government of the colony is the change 
that took place in church matters, the whole institution 
as regards religion having been changed at that time. 
Before 1689 religion had been neglected. Doubtless 
many good Christians were found in the colony, but the 
population was so thinly scattered, and the various 
denominations so numerous, that the support of a min- 
istrv and the keeping open of places of worship, were 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 12/ 

exceedingly difficult. There were a few churches and 
chapels of various denominations of Protestants in widely 
distant places, and the Jesuit fathers had their chapels 
in different parts of the colony. But religion was neces- 
sarily neglected, as the ministers, except the Roman 
Catholic priests, had to depend upon their private 
estates for their living, lands which they had probably 
taken up under the conditions of plantation. Lord Bal- 
timore stated that in his testimony before the Lords of 
Plantations concerning the Church of England clergy in 
1676; nor is there any reason to believe that it was not 
true of all other Protestant ministers, what few there 
were within the colony. The Jesuits had their extensive 
landed property in different parts of the colony, and they 
had also their lay coadjutors to attend to their affairs 
of business. 

As far as is known, and as was declared at the time, 
Lord Baltimore did nothing for religion, except for his 
own church. One of the charges against him in 1690 
was that of erecting and founding chapels for the popish 
superstition, to the encouragement of popery and the 
subversion of the Protestant religion. And another was 
that he took advantage of escheats of lands bequeathed 
and devised to the use of the Protestant ministry. There 
is no evidence whatever that any sums out of the 
revenues of the province, were bestowed in that way. 
As a loyal member of his church, he could not consist- 
ently help along the heretical faith, and as is evidenced 
by the long list of names in the "Act Concerning Re- 
ligion," the denominations were numerous; for that list 
probably indicates the composition of the population. 
In 1676 Lord Baltimore testified that the nonconformists 



128 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

in the colony outnumbered both the Church of England 
people and the Roman Catholics together by three to 
one. As he had been resident in the colony for a number 
of years just previous to this time, his testimony bore the 
full weight of authority. As is known also, he returned 
to the colony in 1680, and remained there about four 
years, so that he was personally responsible for any 
neglect on the part of the government of the province 
in matters of religion. And the same is true of the 
matter of education. 

For religion and education were both very little cared 
for, and the result was a great prevalence of immorality ; 
for though irreligious men, unbelievers or non-believers, 
sceptics or agnostics, may scorn the claims of the chiu*ch, 
yet all men know, who are at all in the tide of life, that 
the ministrations of the church, and the influence of the 
Gospel through those ministrations, have a powerful 
effect upon every community for peace and good order. 
Nor are we called on merely to suppose that immorality 
abounded. The evidence is sufficient of its prevalence 
and of its gross character. It might be inferred from the 
general experience, for in all new communities, before 
order has settled down into a definite habit, vice flour- 
ishes. First adventurers that break away from the 
restraints of settled society to brave new things in a wil- 
derness do not, as a rule, represent the religious part of 
a community. Religion only comes to be considered 
when the first rush has subsided, and a sense of a fixed 
establishment has been reached; because religion belongs 
to the more thoughtful and meditative elements of the 
human mind and heart, however much it may and must 
show itself in the active relations of the humian life. 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. I2Q 

But over and beyond this anticipation, we know Mary- 
land at this time to have been a very immoral commu- 
nity.^ The Rev. Mr. Yeo, who wrote at the time Lord 
Baltimore went to England in 1676, and whose letter 
called out the testimony of Lord Baltimore, as given 
above, reported to the Archbishop of Canterbury that the 
colony was a Sodom of uncleanness and a pesthouse of 
iniquity, and he ascribes as the cause, that the ministry 
were not provided with a support, and so could not live 
in the colony. An immense deal has been made of his 
call for an established support for the ministry, as if it 
were the voice of narrow ecclesiastical bigotry; and even 
McMahon holds Mr. Yeo up to reprobation, and points 
out the example of the Master who came down from 
heaven on His mission of mercy without providing for 
himself an' established support. We need only say that 
such an argument from such a precedent, hardly proves 
an abundance either of learning or of logic in Divine 
matters. That something should have been appropriated 
out of the increasing revenues of the province, either by 
the proprietary or by the Assembly, for the support of 
religion was surely no unreasonable or extravagant 
demand; and if not for God's sake and man's eternal 
good, at any rate as a matter of good policy, and as a 
police measure for securing the welfare of the colony 
It would have been well for Lord Baltimore had he made 
the provision. As reported by Mr. Yeo, there were about 
twenty thousand persons living in the colony at that time. 
Nor does the testimony of Mr. Yeo stand alone; for 
m the year preceding the Protestant Revolution we find 
the president of the Assembly drawing a picture of the 
vice of the colony in the matter of drunkenness, adultery, 



130 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Sabbath-breaking and swearing, which being independent 
evidence, and that of a layman speaking in his official 
character, and following a dozen years after Mr. Yeo's, 
confirms all that he had said. The state of the province 
was wretched in the extreme. Further evidence, also, of 
a confirmatory character, is given in the act of 1692 
providing for an established support of the church; for 
among the functions of the vestry, as then ordered, was 
one providing for the suppression of adultery within 
the several parishes, a function that was performed ; while 
the several parishes show on their records how great the 
evil was. For in one parish, and that in some respects 
exceptionally well placed for moral living, there were 
ten separate cases of gross immorality passed upon in 
one month in the year 1698. 

Lord Baltimore's administration had evidently done 
nothing for the moral welfare of the colony. In this 
respect his government was a failure. The ministers of 
his own church ministered to an insignificant minority, — 
one to thirty, the ratio was reported to be in 1681, — ^while 
tlie great body of the people were deprived of ministerial 
oversight and care. He may have thought them fools 
and blind for rejecting the ministrations that satisfied 
him, but nevertheless they did. And it proved bad 
policy on his part, though it may have satisfied his con- 
science, to have consented to this neglect. An estab- 
lished support, something out of the revenues for the 
maintenance of religion, would have promoted the welfare 
of the colony, and, as it proved, his own. His absolute 
indifference to this matter, with the consequent results, 
was doubtless one cause why the people were willing to 
see his government overthrown and the administration 
pass into the hands of the king. 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. I3I 

For in considering the law of 1692 and its subse- 
quent amendments till 1702, we must always remember 
that it was the act of the people and the people only; and 
not only so, but that what was done was not that which 
the majority of the people would have desired, but what 
they felt was the best their circumstances permitted them 
to do. For the Church of England which they estab- 
lished, was the church of but a part of one-fourth of the 
people; the three-fourths being made up of noncon- 
formists of diverse names and principles, who had during 
the last forty years done what they could, more than 
once, to put down, not only popery, but prelacy as well. 
The act was passed at a time when all the freeholders of 
the colony had the right of franchise; so that the As- 
sembly was not a packed one, but represented all the 
most intelHgent classes of the people. 

Their act, therefore, must have been contrary to their 
preferences, and could they have avoided it they would. 
They did not love the Church of England, nor did that 
Church love them. They had been subjected for many 
years in England, and especially since the Restoration, 
to many and grievous penalties. But something had to 
be done, and established maintenance had to be pro- 
vided that they might have ministerial supervision at all. 
They were broken up themselves into many names. 
Maryland was now a royal colony, and the establishment 
of any one of their different denominations, was an entire 
impossibility; and yet the need was crying and imperative. 
They met their difficulty, therefore, in the only possible 
way; they provided a maintenance for the clergy of the 
Church of England. 



1^2 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

For that was all that was done. It was not a state 
church they set up. No church functionary, clerical or 
lay, had any part in the administration of the colony, 
saving in the matter of suppressing immorality. No right 
to a seat in the Assembly was granted, no possession 
of influence or direction in testamentary matters, no 
voice in the matter of marriages, no independent courts 
in which to try their own causes, not even the power of 
disciplining the clergy themselves. No spiritual court 
of any kind whatever, nothing analogous to the efiforts 
of the Roman Church fifty years before, nothing com- 
mensurate with the influence and power exercised by the 
nonconformist churches in the northern colonies. It was 
in no degree a state church. The state provided main- 
tenance, and in return exercised jurisdiction so far as to 
say who should be settled in the parishes, and to super- 
vise accounts, so as to know whether the money appro- 
priated was properly spent. It even attempted at one time, 
in violation of the fundamental principles of the ministry^ 
to exercise the power of spiritual discipline; but this the 
clergy resisted, and all discipline was held in abeyance. 
All attempts also to set a Bishop over the church, were 
steadily resisted and defeated. The state exacted a 
heavy compensation for the maintenance it bestowed. 
Every man, also, in the province, from the Governor 
down, enjoyed the privilege of indulging in charges and 
complaints against the clergy, a luxury of which very 
many constantly availed themselves. 

Doubtless the men of that day knew what they were 
doing, and they exercised the good judgment that their 
knowledge of affairs and the exigencies of the times 

called for; and it is absurd for us at this day to question 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 1 33 

or fault them in the Hght of our present surroundings. 
For what might be wisdom now, in the midst of our 
dense and well-ordered society, would have been fool- 
ishness then. The establishment of the church was a 
police measure, and a very good police measure it was; 
for it did what could not otherwise be done. It planted 
in thirty-one different centers in the colony a house 
wherein high moral truths were taught — had to be taught 
— both from the pulpit and from the reading-desk, and in 
this way it created a standard of good living. It also 
selected a council for morality in all these places, and 
bound the members to see to the morals of the people; 
and while the minister, or chief vestryman, as he was called, 
was to reprove, rebuke, exhort, the members of this 
council, or vestry, were to have the ability to enforce the 
colonial laws of right living. Observe, I do not speak 
of the high and holy functions of the church, but only 
of its establishment in the colony and what it wrought in 
the minds of the people. 

The system certainly had its defects, as all systems 
have; and society also afterwards outgrew it, so that it 
became an anachronism and was removed; but in its 
earlier day, and through very much of the colonial period, 
it was an unspeakable blessing and accomplished high 
purposes. It is notable, too, that though at any time, 
down to the Revolution, it could have been abrogated, or 
could have been rendered inoperative by the rescinding 
of the provision for the annual tax, yet it was not only 
continued to the Revolution, but was shown very marked 
favor when the necessity arose for its repeal. 

Let us now consider the features of the law itself. 
And first of the assessment laid upon the whole body 



134 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

of the people for the support of the church. This was a 
poll-tax of forty pounds of tobacco, which was the cur- 
rency of the colony, laid upon the whole labor-producing 
part of the population, white male citizens, slaves, both 
male and female, except those too old or too young 
to work, and a man's sons of age to endure labor. This 
was the taxable portion of the community. Ministers 
holding benefices were exempted, and also paupers. 
This forty pounds tax has excited a great deal of com- 
ment, and was through all the colonial period looked 
upon by certain classes, especially the Roman Catholics 
and the Quakers, as a grievance. It was, however, the 
main feature of the law, the very essence of the enact- 
ment, and if the law was at all necessary this tax 
was necessary. It appeared to bear heavily, and was one 
of those evident things that anybody could see. The 
value of the church, however, upon the welfare of the 
colony was not so palpable, and as a consequence people 
did not see the advisability of this demand. Only the 
two classes named above, however, made any very stren- 
uous opposition ; the first of which believed that no min- 
istry was entitled to the name but their own, all the 
rest being heretics, while the second did not believe in a 
paid ministry at all. Forty pounds was the amount in 
the beginning while the population was small. After- 
wards, when it had increased very greatly, the amount 
was reduced to thirty pounds. It may be of some com- 
fort to some persons to know that, with scarcely an 
exception, no one could live in luxury on the income of 
his parish. 

Churches, also, were built by a tax laid, but in this 
case by a special levy. Though this was not under the 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 1 35 

law, but by act of the Assembly in each particular case. 
Current expenses, also, were in this way provided for. 
The voluntary system was hardly known. Gifts were 
sometimes made by individuals, and sometimes very 
handsome ones. Most of the glebes came by gift, and 
many ornaments for the church building. But the 
great reliance was upon the state and the revenue that 
came by the tax ; a good system as far as it went, but not 
adapted to lift the people to any degree of fervor in the 
cause of religion. 

The law had its drawbacks, as all compromise measures 
have, and this law was in a pronounced degree a com- 
promise measure. Probably not one person in five was 
pleased with it. Its chief drawback was the attempt under 
the law, as at first passed, to restrict the liberty of wor- 
ship, which did not of necessity belong to the measure. 
Rather it was a kind of pungent spice thrown in by the 
spirit of the times. It had to be abandoned, however, 
as the discussion proceeded; for, as we have seen, it 
required ten years to bring the law into such shape that 
it could meet with the king's approval. The king had 
more liberality than most men in his day, owing to his 
Dutch training as well as his natural endowments. Eng- 
lish thought also wonderfully developed at this time, at 
any rate among statesmen, as the Toleration Act indi- 
cates. There was no necessity for any restriction upon 
any form of worship, and the right was finally conceded 
in all cases save that of the Roman Catholics, who, how- 
ever unreasonably, were dreaded all through this time. 
The privilege of private worship was accorded them in 
their various chapels, which were found probably on all 
estates. But open church doors and invitations to enter, 



136 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

were forbidden. And this feeling continued down till 
near the close of the colonial period, and until the great 
thought of the province was fully engaged in other mat- 
ters connected with the approaching separation of the 
colony from the mother country. Proselyting was 
dreaded. Protestant children were withdrawn from the 
influence of the Roman Catholic Church, as when a 
Protestant father dying, the mother was of the Roman 
faith. The importation of servants of the Roman faith 
was restricted; the privilege of exercising the franchise 
was denied, not directly, but by the imposition of test 
oaths which no faithful Roman Cath^Dlic could take. 

It is to be observed, however, in regard to all the oaths 
imposed, that such imposition was not the act of the 
Church of England as at this time established. That 
church was in a small minority. It was not established 
by the act of its own members. All the stringent 
measures, like the act of establishment, the forty pounds 
per poll under it, the restraints put upon the Roman 
Church, the imposition of oaths, were the act of the 
people irrespective of church connection. The oaths 
were imposed on vestrymen because they had certain civil 
duties to perform, and were, as vestrymen, State officials. 
The vestrymen need not be members of the Church of 
England, as was officially determined in one interpreta- 
tion of the law, and sometimes they were not of that 
church. The same oaths were also imposed on all 
officers, and that not only in the colony, but in England 
as well, being only of English enactment, and extended 
to the. colonies in the agitation and anxiety of the day. 

Some one speaks of Anglican toleration, and contrasts 
it with the toleration of the proprietaries, but the term is 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 1 3/ 

radically deceptive. The church was only made use of 
because it alone was available for the purposes of the 
people. This, however, is to be said, that having become 
established, it gradually drew into it a very large part 
of the colonial population, at any rate of the influential 
section; though to its shame and ultimate misfortune it 
neglected the great body of the people, failing to grasp 
a splendid opportunity. 

The oaths spoken of above were these: First, I do 
sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and 
bear true allegiance to his majesty King William. 

Secondly, I do swear that I do from my heart abhor, 
detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, the damnable 
doctrine and position that princes excommunicated and 
deprived by the Pope or any authority of the See of 
Rome, may be deposed or murthered by their subjects or 
any other whatsoever. 

Thirdly, And I do declare that no foreign prince, 
person, prelate or potentate, hath or ought to have any 
jurisdiction, power, superiority, primacy or authority, 
ecclesiastical or spiritual, within the realm of England 
or the dominions thereto belonging. 

Fourthly, The following test also was required of every 
church officer: We, the subscribers, do declare that we 
do not believe that there is any Transubstantiation in ye 
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, or in the elements of 
bread and wine, at or after consecration thereof by any 
person or persons whatsoever. 

The third and fourth of these were intended to be test 
oaths, and they were only English acts extended to the 
colony. The first and second were certainly legitimate, 
and what every state is justified in requiring, — the oath 



138 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

of allegiance to the reigning king, and the declaration 
that no man, citizen or foreigner, has any right what- 
soever, derived in any way, to murder him. Whether 
such oaths were required, the men of that day ought to 
have known better than we of this. Certainly their 
apprehensions called them out. They were, however, 
no part of "Anglican toleration," for the Anglican 
Church had nothing whatever to do with them. They 
were political measures. 

In another respect, also, the time of the Protestant 
Revolution is notable: that then first education came to 
be considered as a popular necessity. There is no evi- 
dence that during the whole of the period down to this 
time any consideration was given to the subject. Some 
few of the wealthier citizens, probably, sent their sons 
abroad for training, as they did later in the colony; and 
of course educated parents saw that their children ac- 
quired at least the rudiments of common learning. But 
we can only suppose this. Education was not a subject 
in which the authorities showed any interest. As we 
have seen, even that influence which is exerted by a 
weekly hearing of a man of intelligence preach, was 
in a great measure denied them through the want of 
provision for the support of such teachers. It requires 
but a slight effort to conceive of the wretched condition 
of the colony, the rudeness, ignorance and depravity that 
must have been widespread everywhere within its borders. 

But with the setting up of the royal authority in place 
of the proprietary's, a change took place. The admin- 
istration was exercised not for private revenue, but for 
public advantage. Governor Nicholson, who was a 
man of a great deal of force and energy, no sooner 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. 1 39 

came into the province than he began to agitate for the 
establishment of schools, and so far succeeded, that in 
1696 King William's School at Annapolis, out of which 
St. John's College has since grown, was founded, and 
provision was made for the support of this and other 
schools throughout the province. By a later law, passed 
in 1723, one school was to be opened as near as possible 
in the center of each county. Beside that, Dr. Bray, 
who was the first commissary of the colony, that is, 
presiding officer in church affairs, strove to establish 
libraries in every parish, and though they were under 
the control and for the especial use of the rector, doubt- 
less did much good. 

The change, therefore, that took place in 1689, by 
which the government of the proprietary was overthrown 
and that of the king set up in its place, notwithstanding 
all the animadversion that has been heaped upon it, 
accomplished large benefits for the colony. One-man 
power has never been advisable, and one-man power, 
when the power is exercised to produce the largest 
revenues for the man, has always crippled the energies 
and narrowed the minds of those who have been sub- 
jected to it. Say what we please in eulogy of Charles 
Lord Baltimore and his predecessors, Maryland was their 
private property. All ofiicers were appointed and re- 
moved by them, all laws were vetoed that did not meet 
with their approval. The province had been established 
for revenue and it had been administered for revenue; 
and granting all integrity, no man whose mind is fixed 
on revenue, is capable of taking exalted views of men 
or measures. The commercial standpoint is not a good 
one from which to look at anything. Self must always 



140 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

be dissociated if high purposes are to be apprehended or 
achieved. In the case of the Lords Baltimore, for the 
most part it was revenue drawn from the province to be 
spent in Europe, — absenteeism of the most pronounced 
kind. 

Possibly the great body of the colonists did not know 
what the ailment was with which the province was 
afflicted. But the spirit of liberty and of larger things 
was abroad in the English world. Not only had a tyrant 
been overthrown in England, but a new principle had, in 
his overthrow, been definitely established. The corner- 
stone of a republic had been laid, so that though a life 
tenure was granted to his majesty, and the privilege of 
hereditary succession recognized, yet he ruled by act of 
Parliament, and he knew that that was his right and no 
longer the old myth of a right divine. 

And that was the spirit that influenced Maryland at this 
time. No longer were they satisfied with an ^-absolute 
lord" that exercised dominion by virtue of a charter 
granted by an expelled family; but they wanted to enter 
the current of English life. And therefore, though they 
had nothing of a tyrannical character that could be 
charged against Lord Baltimore, and the charges that 
were made were in some respects exaggerations, yet 
what they did was legitimate, — it was human nature 
breaking loose from old shackles, sloughing off its old 
skin, and seeking association in a larger world. And 
church establishment for the correction of evils, educa- 
tion for the greater elevation of the mind, test acts 
against those who were dreaded, however unjustly, as 
ministers and upholders of ancient tyranny, oath of 
abhorrency as denouncing a principle that had been 



THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. I4I 

avowed in other days, — all these were but incidental to 
the new Hfe upon which the colony was now entering. 
It is true that in 171 5, some twenty-six years after this 
time, the proprietary government was re-established, 
but every one that is familiar with the two periods knows 
that the tone, spirit, character of the people in the later 
differed widely from what they had been in the 
earlier. Maryland, instead of being merely the province 
and private estate of Lord Baltimore, with the feudal 
right of over-lordship, became in all the great questions 
that agitated the English world, part of the great British 
empire. 



EIGHTH LECTURE. 

From the Restoration of the Proprietary Govern- 
ment TILL THE Close of the Colonial Period. 

We have now come to the time in the history of the 
province when another great change was made in its 
government. The royal administration does not seem to 
have been marked by any unusual degree of prosperity 
or of growth, though during the period matters generally 
moved smoothly. Any contentions that may have been 
in the colony, however much they may have disturbed 
society then, were not of a character to outlast their day 
or leave permanent marks behind them. But in 171 5 
great changes occurred, being nothing less important 
than the restoration of the old feudal form of govern- 
ment to the family of the Calverts, in whose hands it 
was to continue till the American Revolution; though it 
is true the last proprietary, Henry Harford, did not bear 
the name or title of the family. 

What brought about this change was that the family 
of Lord Baltimore had in the meanwhile reverted to the 
first faith of the family and become members of the 
Church of England. For this change they have been 
very severely dealt with by some historians, though why 
one hardly knows. The first Lord Baltimore, George, 
changed his faith, and it was said by Archbishop Abbot 
that he did the same three several times before he 
became finally settled, and certainly he was not called 
on to suffer martyrdom for so doing. Rather time and 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. I43 

circumstance proved very auspicious; whether by his 
selection or not is not known. The second Lord Balti- 
more seems to have been a voluntary convert also, 
though but little is known, if anything, as to his age when 
he left the church of his fathers, or what circumstances 
influenced him. Certainly, however, he was not called 
on to suffer martyrdom. 

But when Benedict Leonard renounced his father^s 
faith and became a Protestant, interested and pecuniary 
motives were imputed to him. He made the change 
during his father's lifetime, receiving from his father 
a very severe rebuke, together with the cutting off of 
the allowance which up to this time he had received. 
He remained faithful, however, and as a compensation 
for his father's severity received from the Queen a pension 
during his father's life, and also five hundred pounds 
sterling from Governor Hart out of the emokmients of 
his office in Maryland. His children also were brought 
up in the faith of the Church of England. That un- 
worthy motives influenced him we have no right to say, 
for we know nothing whatever about it. The days of 
Queen Anne were days of great religious controversy, 
and some of the best works in the English language on 
the subject of religion were written at that time. There 
is no reason whatever to believe that the son of Charles 
Calvert was not rationally convinced -by the arguments 
that convinced so many others. 

His father died in the year 1715, having enjoyed 
ample revenues from the province as well as from his 
other estates. Immediately his son solicited King George 
to restore to him the province, with all the extensive 
franchises of the proprietary. This the king granted, 



144 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

but Lord Baltimore had hardly received these when he 
also passed away, leaving the family title and all its 
honors and wealth to a minor child, Charles. This, I 
say, was in the year 171 5, and from this tim.e on till the 
American Revolution Maryland continued under the 
proprietary government. Becoming Protestants, they 
were no longer feared. Maryland, however, was a dif- 
ferent Maryland from what it had been twenty-six years 
before. It had grown into vigorous youth; it had 
become conscious of new rights; it felt itself a part of the 
great British empire; it claimed the rights of British 
subjects; it felt itself, as a province, superior to a pro- 
prietor who was himself, like all its citizens, subjects of 
the head of that empire. That explains why it had so 
many and such long contentions v/ith the proprietaries 
till the close of the colonial days. It was conscious of 
rights and it strove to maintain them, though it had to 
do so often in defiance of ridicule and opposition from 
those who, as officials, represented the proprietary. It 
was a constant series of contentions which, begun with 
a definite purpose, never ceased till that purpose was 
achieved. For this was the characteristic of Maryland 
legislation, that what the people once set their minds on 
achieving was sure at last to be obtained. 

The character of the colonial Assembly of Maryland 
must here be considered. The lower house w^as com- 
posed of those elected by the people as their represen- 
tatives. At this time the suffrage was not universal; for 
beside the law of 1681, by which the franchise was 
limited to freeholders, the test oath, which could be 
required of any one offering to exercise any of the privi- 
leges of the franchise, shut out all consistent and faith- 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. I45 

ful Roman Catholics. They could not be faithful to 
their church and at the same time deny its great leading 
doctrine and the supremacy which the head of their 
church claimed as of right to possess. Often, doubtless, 
too, the members of the Assembly were untrained men; 
for the standard of education was never high in the 
colony. But they were evidently men with definite 
ideas and strong will, and they pursued their ends with 
a persistency that always secured success. 

For this purpose a proprietary government was more 
propitious than a royal one would have been. For the 
difference was immense between contending for certain 
rights which an English baron would deny, and con- 
tending with the sovereign of the British empire. It is 
true they came at last to contend not only with the 
British sovereign and the British parliament, but with 
the whole power of Great Britain. But that came after- 
wards when they had for years been contending for their 
rights as Englishmen, with their immediate over-lord. 
Besides, they had a fight of their own to make, whereas 
had it been a royal government that was immediately 
over them they would have been only one among many 
colonies. A proprietary government, therefore, afforded 
them excellent exercise. It was not too much for them 
in their earlier days. It hardened their civil muscles, 
expanded their patriotic chest, and in time they became 
athletes, ready and able to meet any foe. 

This of the lower house. The upper house was a veiy 
different body. It was not elective, but appointed by 
Lord Baltimore. It was composed of various colonial 
officers, whose salaries were dependent upon the fees of 
their offices. Their interests, therefore, were just the 



146 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Opposite of those of the people. Dependent upon Lord 
Baltimore for their places, they became custodians of his 
claims and interests; and enjoying advantages according 
to the liberality of the monetary policy pursued, they 
were ever ready to resist the attempts of the lower house 
to limit fees, to control taxes, to scan appropriations. 

And this position was recognized all the time. Through 
many years in every way they restricted and suppressed, 
as far as possible, every attempt of the lower house to 
extend its functions. Beside that, they bore themselves 
quite loftily, not merely antagonizing, but scorning and 
ridiculing the lower house. They stood for Lord Balti- 
more and they stood for themselves. They were gen- 
erally men of education and men of position, sometimes 
men of exalted merits; and doubtless the difficulties they 
put in the way of the lower house had the effect of rec- 
tifying their projects, so that what was finally done was 
generally much better done than if there had been no 
objection. For while our ends may in the main be 
right, yet they are seldom so entirely so that criticism 
may not find some rational ground of objection. As it 
happened, also, the claims of the lower house often 
trenched upon the emoluments of the members of the 
upper house, and their criticisms were the more pungent 
on that account. The lower house, too, made a broad 
sweep in their claims, insisting that they occupied in 
Maryland the position of the House of Commons in 
England, and that the whole financial policy of the colony 
was in their hands, in that all money bills must originate 
in their house. And they carried this claim, so far that 
during the French War, after the first year, 1754, nothing 
was done by Maryland, because the colony would only 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. I47 

grant a requisition on its own terms, which terms the 
governor and the upper house would not approve. 

Before going into specifications in this matter, let us 
look at the men who ruled over the province as lords 
proprietary through this time. We have seen that the 
aged Charles died in 171 5, having remained true to his 
religious convictions through the twenty-six years since 
he had been deprived of the administration. All that 
can be said of him is that he was evidently a very re- 
spectable man, and so bore himself towards the people of 
the colony, whether among them or in England, that he 
won their regard. This they testified publicly. Beyond 
this, however, they did not go, and as soon as trouble 
arose it became evident he had not constrained their 
loyalty; for they cast off their allegiance and were more 
severe toward him than even the Protestant king of Eng- 
land was, wishing to take from him not only the govern- 
ment, but also some of his private resources from the 
colony. 

His son, Benedict Leonard, was proprietor so short a 
time that the colonists knew scarcely anything of him, 
nor did he leave sufficient memorials to enable us to 
form a definite opinion of him. Certainly he did not 
distinguish himself by any marked excellence either of 
mind or heart. 

His son again, Charles, the fifth Lord Baltimore, and 
fourth proprietary, is better known, having been promi- 
nent in the social circles of England as a follower of 
Frederick the Prince of Wales, who, it will be remem- 
bered, set up a rival court to that of his father, George 
the Second. Not that his prominence bestows any honor 
upon him, for the prince used him in some of his dis- 



148 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

reputable conduct as a go-between, and afterwards, when 
his conduct caused great social scandal, he disavowed 
Lord Baltimore, leaving to Baltimore the further dis- 
reputable part of attempting to screen himself and the 
prince by disavowing all that had been done. He was 
something of a traveler also. He made a trip to Russia, 
which was a distant point in those days, and on his way 
back stopped witn the Crown Prince of Prussia, after- 
wards Frederick the Great, upon whom he made a very 
agreeable impression. He made also some pretensions 
to learning, and withal seems to have been a good- 
natured, agreeable kind of a man in society. 

He did not command any respect, however, either for 
his abilities, acquirements or character. Walpole once 
described him as "the best and honestest man in the 
world, with a good deal of jumbled knowledge"; and 
again on another occasion, as "poor Lord Baltimore, a 
very good-natured, weak, honest man." The king also 
once described him in conversation: "There is my Lord 
Baltimore, who thinks he understands everything and 
understands nothing, who wants to be well with both 
courts and is well with neither, and, entre nous, is a little 
mad." 

This is the man, then, that was " absolute lord of Mary- 
land" from 1715 to 1751, a period of thirty-six years, a 
man who could veto her laws, nullify the will of the 
people, appoint all her officers, consume taxes laid upon 
her produce, squander her port dues, absorb the fines 
that might have gone to reduce the burdens of the state. 
And all because nearly a hundred years before a king of 
England had given to his ancestor, for two arrow-heads, 
the princely domain included within her borders. He 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. I49 

could excite no respect, for he was worthy of none. He 
was not a patron to the province, for it needed none; 
while in virtue of his family connection he drew immense 
sums every year from the colony to consume in osten- 
tatious and absurd display. 

No wonder, therefore, that the people sought, by 
claiming the privileges of English citizens, though born 
in the colony, to acquire for themselves, as their birth- 
right, the English statutes where they applied, as well as 
the common law of England. Over these there could be 
no veto. It was as in the days of Charles the First, when 
the people, passing over precedents that had accumulated 
during two hundred years and more, went back to the 
days of the earlier Edwards for the rights and principles 
of the English people. The charter bestowed certain 
functions on the proprietary, but it was presupposed that 
all would be like the first, men of judgment and men of 
character. When such ceased to be the case, and when 
also the province had outgrown the days of its infant 
numbers and of its narrow intercourse, the people, as of 
necessity, fell back upon the great inalienable rights of 
their imperial connection. They were Englishmen, and 
claimed all the franchises of Englishmen, and did not 
recognize the right of any sovereign to bestow, by 
charter or otherwise, any of their inherent rights upon 
any one. 

When we turn, however, to Charles's son, the next 
proprietary, Frederick, we find all that has been said of 
the father applicable, only drawn in stronger colors. Like 
his father, he was a traveler. He had desire also to pose 
as an author, and distinguished himself chiefly by show- 
ing how much paper and ink he could waste on the 



ISO HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

display of vanity and self-conceit. The description given 
of him by one of his own day is this, that he imagined 
"that he had too much genius, and that his Creator 
would have shown much more benevolence had He given 
him less intelligence and more bodily strength. He 
was one of those worn-out beings, a hipped Englishman, 
who had lost all moral and physical taste. He knows 
not what to do with himself, finds nothing to his taste. 
With an income of thirty thousand pounds sterling, he 
knows not how to enjoy it. He became so intolerable 
that at last I frankly told him my opinion." In addition 
to this, he was a man of very bad habits. In 1768 he 
was tried for a most infamous crime, an assault upon a 
female, and though acquitted, the universal feeling was 
that he was guilty. As is well known, his private life 
was bad. He died in 1771, worn out by a Hfe of dissi- 
pation. 

The province of Maryland was left by will to Henry 
Harford, the natural son of Frederick, with all the private 
and executive rights which the father had possessed. He 
was a minor at the time of his accession, and the province 
had to be administered by guardians in his name. By 
this time, however, Maryland, along with the other 
colonies, was so excited by the great questions springing 
to the front in connection with the policy of the home 
country,— though Maryland, also, herself had certain 
great colonial causes to agitate her, — that it would have 
made very little difference who was proprietary. Besides, 
Governor Eden, who was then in the colony, was not a 
man of a very vigorous, though very amiable, character, 
and proprietary rights were not brought offensively for- 
ward. What may be said is, that with such a series of 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. I5I 

absolute lords, claiming great powers under the charter, 
it is no wonder tliat Maryland was what it was, — a body 
pclitic claiming and struggling for the largest possible 
independence, resisting assumptions by the proprietary, 
and by the governor and council that spoke for him, 
and asserting rights that practically annulled prerogatives 
that had been enjoyed from the beginning. A series of 
exalted men, of large and liberal minds, who, knowing 
the people, would have fostered what was good, would 
have been able to keep the province in peace. As it was, 
there was nothing to retard that natural growth of a free 
spirit, that, passing on from claim to claim, did not rest 
till a free and entire republic was established. 

Between 171 5 and 1776 there were three great notable 
periods of agitation, in which the subjects were of a local 
character and not connected with that other agitation in 
which Maryland took part with all the other colonies. 
The first of these periods reached from 1722 to 1732, 
years of efifort on the part of the lower house, with 
steady antagonism on the part of the upper. The great 
question was, By what law shall the province be gov- 
erned? Lord Baltimore said, By the laws that I approve; 
the colonists said, By the laws of Great Britain as far 
as those laws are applicable in the colony. Not here a 
law and there a law as the proprietary shall think advisable, 
but whatever laws are found within the English code and 
are suitable to the circumstances of the colony, shall be 
appealed to and applied in the administration of the colony. 
It was not a new question by any means. For many 
years the principle had been recognized and acted on 
in particular instances, yet such limited application had 
never been satisfactory to the people, for it had always 



152 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

been a question for the courts to decide whether a 
law applied, and the judges, being of Lord Baltimore's 
appointment, could never be looked upon as impartial 
between him and the people, or in any case in which 
he in his own name or in that of his friends or adherents 
might be interested. For beside many other ways in 
which his lordship might be a party in matters of 
litigation, it will be remembered that the family had 
retained extensive tracts of land in dififerent parts of the 
colony, as manors. So that he was as liable as another 
freeholder of the colony to meet with the difficulties 
incident to property. 

It was true, as the court party, as the adherents of 
his lordship were called, said that a law of England did 
not necessarily operate in the colony; for various laws 
of a most important character, as the Habeas Corpus 
act, and the Toleration act, were not in force in Mary- 
land until they had been adopted here. The whole was 
one of those cases so common in the legislative or 
judicial history of a people, where occasional incidents 
gradually go to establish a principle, until at last what 
was only sporadic becomes the consistent and lawful 
process. 

Lord Baltimore claimed that such a principle would 
neutralize his right under the charter to assent to laws, 
and therefore he opposed it year by year. Particular 
laws might be recognized and applied, but to take up 
the whole body of English laws "in a lump," as he 
expressed it, did away with all the veto power of his 
provincial jurisdiction. It is true it was a rule that 
might work both ways, for while it might save the people 
from the arbitraiy government of the proprietan,', it 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 1 53 

might also introduce laws that might seriously impair 
their own peculiar liberties; for there were many laws 
on the statute-book of England that would not have 
suited the feelings of the people of Maryland. 

They pursued the matter, however, to an issue, which, 
though appearing to be a compromise, with the balance 
in favor of the proprietary, in its substantial results and 
further consequences was altogether with the people. 
The contest lasted nearly ten years. The terms finally 
reached were apparently ambiguous, but the practice of 
the courts of the colony henceforth was to accept such 
laws of England as were plainly applicable to the case 
before them. 

The next great period was that reaching from 1754 to 
1763. There had been trouble in the colony, beginning 
with the year 1739, on the question of the revenue which 
Charles Lord Baltimore was receiving. The people 
claimed that he received more than he was entitled to, 
that money that came to his hand ought to go into the 
treasury of the colony, and so the people be eased in 
their burdens. This controversy lasted till all such dis- 
sensions were lost in the revolutionary struggle. The 
controversy of the period between 1754 and 1763 was, 
however, of a different character. It was the period of 
the French War, which terminated in the last-named year; 
only the peculiarity is that the French and English pro- 
vinces were in arms before the parent states had formally 
declared war. 

In the pressure of the first-named year the colony 
responded to a requisition to the amount of six thousand 
pounds, and then provided for a sinking fund with which 
to liquidate the loan at maturity. This was done by 



154 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

various taxes imposed on the people on various kinds of 
property. Among these we find a tax of a peculiar kind, 
different from any that we know of at this day. Mary- 
land, through all the colonial period, had a poll tax, the 
most of her revenue being raised in that way. We have 
already seen the features of the law providing for such 
an imposition. This tax seems to have been levied to 
such an extent and in such an offensive way during the 
colonial period, that ever since then the people have 
utterly repudiated the system. 

This sinking fund, however, was not provided for by a 
poll tax, though in one of its items persons were intro- 
duced with a discriminating odiousness that must have 
been offensive to the parties concerned. It was an 
income tax levied upon bachelors because they w^ere 
bachelors, the amount being rated according to their 
incomes. Why they should have been so treated the 
law did not say. Proba1)ly the implied meaning of the 
law was that if not married they ought to have been, and 
that they could be if they would. Neither unmarried 
ladies were taxed, however large their incomes, nor 
widowers, even though they might not have children — 
only bachelors. It was evidently intended to be a penalty. 
This notion receives confirmation in the fact that bachelors 
are named along with luxuries, such as wines and billiard 
tables. The vestries throughout the province were re- 
quired to return the names and rated incomes of all the 
bachelors within their parochial limits, and in many of the 
old parish records we find such lists. 

After 1754 Maryland's course was different, and though 
the governor and council were anxious to heed the royal 
requisition for carrying on the war, yet Maryland did 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 155 

little or nothing; for her first principle was that when 
the danger did not threaten her own borders the matter 
was no concern of hers; and so, however strong the 
demand might be, either from England or from the 
sister-colonies, she would do nothing. This was a selfish 
policy and might have proven a short-sighted one. Shut 
in as she was by Pennsylvania and Virginia, she was not 
to the same extent exposed; but the nature of the war, as 
carried on by the French and Indians together, might 
have brought on an inroad at any time. It was selfish, 
also, as showing an unwillingness to help those in their 
extremity with whom she was bound by so many ties, not 
only of blood, but also of interest. For though the colo- 
nies had not come yet to understand it, they not long 
afterwards learned that their interests were one, and that 
they must all stand or fall together. This came to be 
fully understood when the great emergency arose. 

A second reason why Maryland did so little during the 
war was the jealousy of the Assembly against Lord Bal- 
timore on account of the revenues he was receiving from 
the colony, the amount at this time being from eight to 
ten thousand pounds sterling. Part of this they were 
convinced he was not entitled to; and certainly the 
province was nearly a sinecure to him, with a revenue 
out of all proportion to any outlay or attention that his 
ancestors had expended upon it. The people were there- 
fore jealous, and when the time came to provide for the 
requisition made by the English ministry for prosecuting 
the French war, Maryland insisted that the lands and 
revenues of the proprietary should bear their share of the 
necessary tax. This was, of course, bitterly opposed by 
the governor and the upper house. We can see no 



156 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

reason why the Assembly was not right. We cannot see 
why extensive manors, and vacant lands in the market 
for sale, which were equally with all the other lands in 
the province to be protected against foreign encroach- 
ments, should not bear their equal share of the burdens 
of the province. We cannot understand why fines, which 
were penalties for the violation of the laws of the province, 
should not go to the support of the commonwealth. Nor 
can we see why licenses for carrying on business in the 
colony should go without drawback to the proprietary 
when the business itself was to be protected by means of 
the tax. 

The whole order of things was radically different from 
our notions of what is right. The colony existed for 
Lord Baltimore, according to his view. It was not a 
commonwealth, but his private property. It was his 
peace that was broken, for which fines were imposed; of 
his grace that business was carried on, for which his 
license was given. All its administration was of his 
right and all its emoluments for his advantage. It was a 
strange condition of things. It had not the redeeming 
feature of royalty to tone down its severe expression, in 
which antiquity and long usage mitigate the hereditary 
idea. 

Beside that, as we have seen, the present proprietary, 
Frederick, was not one on whom the people could look 
with any respect. We have already seen his character, — 
vain, foolish, depraved. Born in 1731, he was now in 
full career, and had exhibited the leading traits of his dis- 
position. His father, also, who had died in 1 751, was in 
no way qualified to win respect. These things made the 
people the more jealous. They believed that they were 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 15/ 

being defrauded in various ways by the proprietary, and 
that the governor and upper house were, in his behalf, 
enemies of the rights and interests of the people. In the 
matter of licenses, and in the matter of port and tobacco 
duties, they believed they were being robbed every day, 
and so the position they assumed. The whole adminis- 
trative power being in the hands of those appointed by 
Lord Baltimore, they had no redress. Now, however, an 
opportunity was presented of asserting the rights of the 
people, and it was done. One feature of their proposed 
ordinance was unfortunate. As the war was with a 
Roman Catholic power, and as they could not disabuse 
their minds of fear and jealousy of all Roman Catholics, 
they attempted to double the rate of the imposition of 
taxes upon such of the colony as were of that faith. The 
reasoning certainly was not logical and the conclusion 
was not just. 

The consequence, however, of all these features of the 
law was that the colony did nothing for the prosecution 
of the war. The lower house would not depart from the 
position it had taken, and the governor and council would 
not approve the relief bill as passed. The other colonies 
complained bitteriy of Maryland's inactivity, the British 
ministry was highly indignant and indulged in threats of 
coercion, but the Assembly stood fast. They laid the 
blame on the governor and council, and the governor 
laid the blame on the Assembly. The result, however, 
was the same. The people as represented — for the lower 
house was unanimous — had reached the point, as against 
the proprietary, when they would preserve their rights, 
and while they would help the general cause on their 
own terms, they would net help on any other. It shows 



158 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

the spirit and resolution of the time. The dissension was 
continued through nine sessions of the Assembly, with 
the only result that the people of the colony got further 
training in the principles that were afterward to be 
accepted as the groundwork of their political existence. 

The next period reaches from 1770 to 1773, and was a 
time of as much agitation and political ferment in the 
colony as any, may be, it ever passed through. To under- 
stand it we must bear in mind that the rule of the 
Assembly of Maryland, in the matter of money bills, 
had been to pass them only for a limited period, so that 
they had to be renewed from time to time. The advan- 
tage of this was that, holding the purse-strings, they 
could control so far the administration. It was a rule 
growing out of the resolution to preserve their rights; 
for, as we have seen, while no law could become such 
without the assent of the proprietary, so also no law 
could be repealed without his consent. To limit the period 
of the operation of a law, therefore, was their only safe- 
guard. This principle is adopted in all free states. 

Among the laws so passed was that of 1763, regulating 
the fees of ofiBce in the various executive departments, 
a law that was limited to seven years, and consequently 
expired in 1770. When this time came the lower house, 
reviewing the matter, discovered that certain officers 
were receiving most extravagant sums, — the secretary 
four thousand three hundred and seventy-six dollars, the 
judges of the land office three thousand four hundred and 
thirty-eight dollars, and the commissary-general three 
thousand nine htmdred and twenty-three dollars, — salaries 
which, however moderate as compared with some at this 
day, were very large for that time. 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 1 59 

The people, therefore, refused to renew the old law 
and insisted on certain reductions; but as the act of the 
lower house had to be approved by the upper, and these 
officers named were four members of the upper, their 
attempt came to nothing. The contention was prolonged 
and very angry, with the result that the Assembly was 
prorogued, with no law to regulate this very important 
matter. In this position of affairs Governor Eden at- 
tempted a solution, and raised a storm that agitated the 
colony deeply. He attempted by his own individual act 
to re-establish the law of 1763, with the fees therein pro- 
vided, until the Assembly should pass a new act— a thing 
unnecessary if the governor could accomplish the same 
by proclamation. 

With this the war began, hot and prolonged, in which 
all the ablest men of the province became interested. 
For to rule by proclamation, to assume the power to lay 
taxes, which the fees were declared to be, without the 
consent of the people, was always in the English world 
regarded as the grossest stretch of tyrannical power. 
Able lawyers contended, on the other side, that a fee was 
not a tax, and, appealing to precedent, tried to justify the 
governor's act. The response was that the duties of 
these various officers were essential for the people's wel- 
fare, that they were not a matter of choice, but of neces- 
sity, and that, therefore, they were a tax whose imposition 
belonged alone to the people; and they objected not 
only to the extravagance of the charges in this case, but 
absolutely to the principle involved. 

It was in this controversy that Charles Carroll first 
came prominently before the people, and it was in this 
controversy that Daniel Dulany, one of the ablest men in 



l60 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Maryland annals, wounded his reputation irretrievably. 
He had defended Maryland and the other colonies in the 
Stamp Act agitation, using his pen with great power, and 
exercising an influence in England as well as in America. 
But now, as provincial secretary, and the beneficiary of 
large emoluments from his office, he came forward to 
defend a principle on the denial of which the very exist- 
ence of a free people depends. For when a ruler can 
tax a people by proclamation without law the whole 
power of the state is in his hands. 

Of course there could be but one issue to such a con- 
test at any time, and particularly now when the public 
mind was so much aroused on great civil questions. 
For this discussion began only five years after that of 
the Stamp Act, which had excited all America. By the 
elections of 1773 the will of the people was definitely 
proclaimed and government by proclamation received 
its quietus. 

Associated with this controversy there was another 
that derived factitious interest because of its association, 
though it was also a matter of very great moment: the 
question of the salaries of the clergy under the act of 
establishment. By the law of 1763 these had been re- 
duced from the original sum of forty pounds of tobacco 
per poll to thirty pounds, and when this law ceased by 
limitation, the question was, what were the clergy to 
receive? In this case the resort was not had to procla- 
mation, as in the other, but the earlier tax of forty 
pounds was revived. For the law of 1702 was not 
repealed in whole or in part, but only thirty pounds 
appointed instead of the forty by the law of 1763. The 
whole process seems to have been peculiar, for this sub- 



THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. l6l 

stitution of one rate for another without any repeal or 
amendment of the law which set the rate was something 
out of course. The agitation was wide-spread and very 
keen, though the principal use of it seems to have been 
to give the excited brains of the day another subject on 
which to show their skill and acrimony. Another ques- 
tion arose during the controversy, whether the act of 
establishment had been valid from the beginning, the 
ground being that though the Assembly that passed the 
law had been summoned by writs running in King Wil- 
liam's name, yet that he had died before the law was 
passed, his death not being known of in the colony, 
and that consequently the act was null and void. This 
question the people of the day did not attempt to settle, 
passing it over to a more convenient season. The other 
question of the amount of the tax was determined in 
1773, thirty pounds being again appointed. All other 
questions were soon lost sight of in the great agitation 
leading to the revolutionary struggle. 

And now for the conclusion of the proprietary gov- 
ernment. Henry Harford succeeded his father Frederick, 
not as of hereditary right, for his birth precluded that; 
but by his father's will all the property of Lord Baltimore 
and all the high privileges of " absolute lord " descended 
to him. It is not Hkely, however, that people paid much 
attention to the fact, though to many of them it must 
have appeared as the last point of their anomalous posi- 
tion, that all the extensive prerogatives of government 
and all the extensive revenues that arose in the admin- 
istration of government, fines, licenses, duties, should 
pass over by will to another, an illegitimate child, a 
minor, one who knew nothing of the colony, and had no 



1 62 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

interest whatever in its welfare beyond his own revenues. 
But the mind of the colony was now fixed on other 
things. All attention was absorbed in great questions. 
Principles, not men, occupied their attention. Robert 
Eden, the governor at the time in the colony, was per- 
sonally a popular man, however unpopular his course in 
regard to the proclamation. He had, however, but little 
influence. The people, by the Assembly, as well as by 
their meetings held everywhere, were asserting master- 
ship, and the time between his accession and the Revolu- 
tion was too short for any new question to arise about 
the rights of government. 

In 1775, July 26, the Convention of Maryland took the 
government into its own hands and proprietary control 
ceased. The private rights of the proprietary were recog- 
nized till 1780, when the people having become irritated 
by the course of the Tory party in the colony, and by 
the refusal of the English trustees to honor the drafts 
of the State upon the public funds in the Bank of Eng- 
land, all the property of British subjects in the State was 
confiscated, amongst which property was that of Henry 
Harford. The State afterwards paid him ten thousand 
pounds sterling in compromise of all claims. In this 
way ended a connection which, however rational accord- 
ing to the ideas of the year 1634, had become in 1776 
an anachronism and a monstrosity, so great had been 
the progress which the human mind had undergone within 
one hundred and fifty years. 



NINTH LECTURE. 

Maryland and the American Revolution. 

We have endeavored to trace through the preceding 
lectures the development of a sense of liberty and the 
spirit of independence in the people of Maryland during 
the colonial period. That spirit we have seen manifested 
even in the beginning, when Lord Baltimore attempted 
to restrict the privilege of the people in the matter of pro- 
posing laws for their government. From that time on 
there never was a day in which that same spirit was not 
manifested. Sometimes it was toward the proprietary, 
sometimes the governor or council, sometimes it was 
tow^ards the king and British ministry. It was always 
there, ready to be called forth upon ever}^ occasion. 

What was all this but a steady course of education and 
training for the final development into statehood, the 
maturity of the commonwealth, in which the people of 
the state were to be their own masters and pursue their 
own courses, untrammeled by any over-lord of any name? 
The jealousy of Maryland in this was remarkable, as was 
evidenced by the fact that though she fought resolutely 
from the beginning of the war to the end of it, and took 
such deep interest in the period of agitation that preceded 
the breaking out of hostilities, yet she did not enter the 
Confederacy till 1781. Her position in the matter was 
rather that of an ally than of a confederate, in which, while 
she did her whole part and received encomiums both for 
her civil policy and the martial zeal and ability of her sons, 



164 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

yet at the same time she insisted that a broad spirit of 
equity should be observed by all. Her whole life was in 
the cause, but her independence was preserved amongst 
her equals in the contest. 

The purpose of this lecture is to review the course of 
Maryland during the whole period of the conflict. As 
we have seen, during tlie French War the wrath of the 
British ministry nad no terrors for her. Her legislature 
had definite ideas of what was right to herself, and they 
pursued those ideas irrespective of threats from any source. 
The great English minister who afterwards espoused the 
cause of the colonies, William Pitt, was irritated to the 
highest degree. Governor Sharpe, though in a very 
eminent degree he commanded the respect of the people, 
urged in his irritation that, as the colony could not be 
reached by the direct method, a stamped paper be imposed 
on the colonies, to be used in all legal transactions; the 
same law that was afterwards attempted by the English 
Parliament with such signal failure. He even went so 
far as to send the draft of such a law to the Ministry. 
Maryland had never learned to stand in awe of any power 
or authority, but from the beginning insisted definitely 
on her own autonomy, that she was free to regulate her 
own internal afifairs without dictation from any source. 

Not that she was factious or rebellious in temperament. 
The contrary was the case. She gave the proprietaries, 
when there was cause for it, strong and substantial proofs 
of her more than loyalty to them. Also she evinced every 
desire not to break ofif her connection with the British 
empire; and when the British ministry relaxed its efforts 
to tax the colonies by the repeal of the stamp act, Mary- 
land cordially rejoiced. Also she bore quietly through 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. l6$ 

many years the onerous and unjust navigation laws, 
though they were in such conflict with her own prosperity, 
restricting and confining her trade for the benefit of the 
English merchants. 

Yet all the time the spirit was there. The charter of 
the province guaranteed the people of the colony the 
rights of Englishmen; and those rights they were as for- 
ward to maintain as the members of the Long Parliament 
were ; and in fact the lines of batde were the same as they 
had been in the days of the Long Parliament. The only 
change had been that Englishmen in the earlier period 
had been compelled to struggle against the pretensions of 
the king, while the colonists were compelled to struggle 
against the Parliament. The rule had only again been 
shown in operation. In the first case their own interests 
and rights had made exceeding keen the vision of the 
English people; but when it was somebody else's rights 
and interests which were in jeopardy, the same English 
people could not see the application of great English 
principles. 

The point at issue was the right of the people to tax 
themselves, to the exclusion of anybody else's right; taxa- 
tion with representation, not without. That w^as the prin- 
ciple at stake, and all the attempts at subterfuge, as the 
pretense of virtual representation, as if the colonists stood 
upon the same platform with the great disfranchised classes 
of England, were ruthlessly pushed aside. Represen- 
tation, with the Maryland colonists, meant the election by 
themselves of their own deputies to the British Parlia- 
ment, as they elected their own deputies to their colonial 
Assembly. This was necessary for their protection; but 
this was impossible at the same time, rendered so by the 



1 66 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

distance and by all the other circumstances of the 
colonies. 

Also they brushed aside the claims of the English 
ministry, that the great English debt had been contracted 
in the defense of the colonies against French aggression. 
It was only English and French battles fought in America, 
a struggle that had been going on since the days of Wil- 
liam the Third, the outbreak of the old jealousy that had 
been manifesting its virulence for centuries, since the days 
when the Edwards and Henrys had claimed the kingdom 
of France for the English crown. Taxation for revenue 
is impossible, was their first principle, because representa- 
tion is impossible ; though they did submit when the impo- 
sition wore another face, as, for instance, when a law was 
passed regulating commerce, even though the law did 
infringe upon the freedom of trade and affected their com- 
mercial interests. For it was not a question of money 
with the colonists. They did not rise in indignation when 
it was a money consideration that was presented. This is 
seen in the fact that when all other items were stricken out 
of the law, and only tea was left as the article on which a 
tax should be levied, and when, in further modification, 
the East India Company was allowed a drawback to the 
amount of the proposed duty, which drawback they pro- 
posed to give the colonists the benefit of, so that the tea 
should not cost them more than it would without the 
tax, yet even then the colonists did not let up for one 
moment. The principle itself must be abrogated, denied 
by the British authorities themselves. The No-taxation 
was to be regarded as the definite article of the American 
Constitution by the English authorities, and no precedent, 
however little it might cost at first, was to be allowed to 
establish itself. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 1 6/ 

The English authorities did not know what they were 
doing for America by the ten years of agitation which 
they fomented. For this was the time, from 1765, when 
the Stamp Act was passed, until the waters reached a 
head and all barriers were swept away. We are some- 
times surprised at the vim and enthusiasm of America in 
the days of the Revolution; we are surprised at the tone 
and fervor of the Declaration of Independence, and at the 
exalted character and intelligence of the men who guided 
the new^-born state in the days of its infancy. Rather it 
had no infancy, but sprang equipped, a well-armed war- 
rior, at once into existence. But the agitation and dis- 
cussion of ten years had done it. The generation of men 
that had come to the front, had drunk in a knowledge of 
those principles of civil and national freedom from the 
atmosphere. Those principles found a congenial soil; 
for all the colonies of America had and cultivated thoughts 
of their own independence in all matters of internal regu- 
lation. The soil was worthy of the principle. And so, 
when the day of enfranchisement came, when the question 
was injustice and humiliation, or a heroic efifort for 
national life and the security of personal freedom, they 
were ready for it. And though the result was a long 
struggle, that tried the sincerity of the convictions of all, 
yet the issue was a state founded on the most rational 
ideas of individual rights and responsibility. 

What is the record of Maryland for all this period? 
It is one of entire harmony with the whole national move- 
ment, the drift and tendency toward national ideas. 
Maryland has never been a quiet State. Whenever there 
has been any agitation in the country, Maryland has been 
involved in it. She has always been in touch with the 



1 68 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

country, and, being a Border State, with a mixed popula- 
tion, she has been in touch with the whole country. And 
this was her condition at this time. We have seen her 
bearing during all the French War, how greatly all sec- 
tions of the people were aroused on the great question of 
heeding the royal requisitions for men and money for 
prosecuting that war. That agitation was on a question of 
principle and of justice, and out of that she passed into 
the new agitation that now arose. 

In consequence of the determined position of the 
Assembly at that time, it had been prorogued, November, 
1763, and no session was held till September, 1765, 
when, in consequence of the proportions the Stamp 
Act agitation had assumed, it was called together. The 
act itself had been passed in March of that year, and had 
immediately been received by the other colonies with every 
mark of indignation. Such was the feeling throughout 
Maryland, and as soon as the Assembly convened it 
voiced the public feeling in a most definite way. The 
only business it would transact at all at this session was 
concerning the Stamp Act, as if it were a matter of such 
transcendent importance that everything else was too 
insignificant to be associated with it. To this end two 
propositions were before them. One of these was whether 
they should acquiesce in the proposition of Massachusetts 
to send delegates to a colonial congress, that by this 
means the universal sentiment of the colonies might be 
voiced to the ears of the British ministry. Upon this they 
immediately resolved, and not the lower house only, but 
also the upper, and their action received the approval of 
the governor. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 1 69 

This was of course inconsistent on his part, for he had, 
as we have seen, suggested during the French War 
troubles, when the colony had refused the requisitions, 
that this very plan be pursued for raising a revenue, and 
had even sent to England a draft of a law to this end. 
Bui at this time a new consideration had entered; for not 
only the people, but Lord Baltimore himself, as proprie- 
tary, felt his interests invaded by the attempt of the 
ministry to lay this tax; and for this reason the governor 
and members of the council were found side by side with 
the Assembly. The proposed congress met in October, 
1765, and its action was heartily approved by the Assem- 
bly of Maryland when its delegates reported to that body, 
in November of the same year. 

But the Assembly of Maryland did not stop with this. 
In the September session they passed unanimously certain 
resolutions of their own, in which, besides pleading their 
own right to exemption, under their charter, from Eng- 
lish taxation, they emphasized the American position, 
that they would not, as well as could not, submit to the 
ministerial attempt. They claimed for Maryland certain 
constitutional principles, certain rights which the British 
Parliament had no right to take away from them, and 
which they had enjoyed from time immemorial. 

But beside the action of the Assembly, the bearing of 
private individuals was equally as definite. One of the 
most able as well as far-reaching of all the pamphlets 
written at this time, was by one of Maryland's sons, 
Daniel Dulany ; far-reaching in that it not only defined the 
colonial position in this matter, but also went far to giving 
clear apprehension, even in England, of what America 
claimed, and swayed to a very perceptible degree public 



170 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

sentiment there. It enabled English statesmen to put 
themselves in America's place. It also went farther 
than this and urged upon the citizens of America to 
develop their own internal resources, in manufacturing 
whatsoever they could for their common necessities; and 
this for the purpose of making the merchants of England 
feel the power of America, and to indicate that to attempt 
to oppress her would certainly react to their own per- 
manent loss. 

And this advice was followed; for non-importation be- 
came a cry at this time, and continued so down till the 
crisis came; non-importation of everything on which the 
English government attempted to lay the tariff; and, 
finally, after the Boston Port Bill, non-importation of 
everything; the feeling being that the nearest way to 
English prejudices and to the English sense of justice 
was through the pocket of her merchants. 

But Maryland adopted more vigorous measures still. 
For so high ran the indignation, that in various places 
the distributor of the stamped paper was flogged, hanged 
and burned in effigy, and himself in person treated with 
great indignity, and the house in which he lived torn 
down. He had accepted the office while in England and, 
doubtless, ignorant of how high public sentiment ran in 
the colony. After he had been so severely treated he 
fled to New York, where, not more kindly received than 
he had been in Maryland, he was compelled to relinquish 
his office and to promise that henceforth he would have 
nothing to do with the execution of the law. A violent 
discussion also went on continually in the public press. 
Associations, called the Sons of Liberty, were formed 
everywhere, and kept their watchful eye upon everybody 
and everything that was open to suspicion. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. I^I 

The effect of all this was what might very readily be 
supposed. The stamped paper was never even landed in 
Maryland, but was kept safe on one of his Majesty's ships 
in Virginia waters. Governor Sharpe wrote home from 
Maryland that it would be impossible to execute the law. 
The county court at Fredericktown took upon itself to 
say that the law could not be carried out, and that the 
business of the court must proceed without it. The pro- 
vincial court also did the same, and so the law became a 
dead letter. The other colonies pursued the same line of 
conduct; so that in 1766, on the eighteenth of March, the 
act itself was repealed by the British Parliament, — having 
been in existence one year, and having worked incal- 
culable mischief. 

For though all America rejoiced, and Maryland with 
it, in the repeal, the agitation had brought the colonies 
together and taught them the power of protest and resist- 
ance, as nothing else could. It had taught them that they 
were a family of states, with common interests and a com- 
mon destiny, and that their wisest policy was to combine, 
and that combination meant strength. On other occa- 
sions attempts had been made to bring the colonies 
together in congress, but had been ineffectual. But their 
present distress taught them the necessity, and from this 
time forth the national idea existed. 

If, however, they fancied they had achieved what they 
desired, and secured their liberties, their confidence was 
short-lived. The English government had gone too far 
to stop. One ministry had been overthrown, and another 
had taken its place; and under that law, that whom the 
gods wish to destroy they first make mad, they proceeded 
in their policy of exacting a revenue from the colonies. 



1/2 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Doubtless, the predisposition of the English people was 
in favor of such a policy; for most persons, if there be 
any decent pretext for it, are willing to have other people 
pay their debts. This the English people thought a good 
thing at this time, when debts were exceedingly heavy. 
Besides, the new ministry was goaded on by the old, and 
taunted by the ex-minister with "you dare not tax the 
colonies." 

The blindness of the English administration was, how- 
ever, never more manifested than now; for it was thought 
that an indirect method, such as putting an import duty 
on articles brought into the country, would disguise the 
fact of taxation to the American mind. Such a law, it 
was supposed, would wear the appearance of a regulation 
concerning commerce, such as the colonies had submitted 
to in their past history, when shipping laws were passed 
by the Parliament. Unfortunately, however, the colonies 
remembered that at the time of repealing the stamp act, 
that body had passed a declaratory act asserting the right 
to tax the colonies for revenue. Also during the agita- 
tion caused by the proposed stamp duty, the people had 
come to regard the yielding to regulations concerning 
commerce as unwise, and so to antagonize any new 
attempt in that direction. The repeal of the stamp act, 
therefore, settled nothing; it only suspended the agita- 
tion for the moment. The English had only quailed 
before the storm which the stamp act had raised. 

The cause of the colonies had been championed by the 
heroic Pitt, who gloried in their resistance, saying it was 
better that three millions should resist than that all Eng- 
lishmen should become slaves. He regarded their action 
as the assertion of English freedom. Possibly he felt 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 



173 



and knew beforehand what was coming. For a century 
England had not been so near to an absolute monarchy 
as it became at this time, when George the Third as- 
sumed, through his tools in the ministry, a personal 
direction of all the affairs of the English administration. 
He, the king, spoke of "the fatal compliance of 1766,'' as 
if England had committed a gross and dangerous mis- 
take in repealing the stamp act. And so, as if to cover 
up what was esteemed a shame, to wipe out a disgrace, 
the act of 1767 was passed, laying a tax on tea, glass, 
paper and painters' colors. It was at this time, also, that 
all those irritating causes became prevalent that are 
enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. For to 
provide against evasion of the law, not only was the 
collection of the proposed duties taken out of the hands 
of colonial authorities, but "writs of assistance" were 
authorized, providing for a forcible entry into private 
houses and dwellings by custom-house officers in search- 
ing for smuggled goods, doing away with the protection 
of the home that was provided for by the laws of the 
colonies. 

Both parties were irritated and became more irritated 
than ever. The colonies had rights and dared maintain 
them. The English government denied their rights, and 
with a sense of power to enforce its will, and despising 
itself for its former weakness as it thought it to be, 
determined to proceed farther than it had done before. 

The result could, of course, be readily anticipated. 
America was aroused more than ever. All the colonies, 
and Mar>'land not less than any, became organized for 
resistance. An attempt was made to reach English legis- 
lators again through the pockets of English merchants. 



1/4 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

Non-importation became again the rule, and that not 
only of the things taxed, but of anything but the strictest 
necessaries of life. Appeal was made to the king, who, 
as said above, now became all-powerful in the direction 
of affairs. Again the ministry yielded, but only in part. 
Everything was relieved of the tax except tea; but the 
people were not pacified. The tax must be entirely 
removed. Even when tea was offered at the price at 
which it could have been sold had no tariff been placed 
upon it, the people would not touch it. Tax for revenue, 
?.s laid by the English parliament, must be resisted. 

This was the clearly announced position, and by it the 
colonies stood. Face to face with an indignant and 
powerful country, they stood without fear, not desiring 
that things should proceed to extremities, but if they 
must, then willing to abide by the consequences. It was 
a bold, definite and heroic position consistently main- 
tained. And Maryland's position was with the foremost. 
Even when in 1770 the duty on all articles but tea was 
repealed, and some of the Northern colonies began to 
withdraw from the non-importation agreement, Maryland 
uttered her protest. It was a measure that could only 
stand by common consent, and so the Baltimore and 
other merchants of the State at last opened their trade 
to the articles that had been shut out. But the non- 
importation of tea, as the one thing on which the British 
king still insisted on placing a tariff, was adhered to most 
jealously. The British government attempted to quiet 
the feelings of the people by promising that England 
would proceed no further in the matter of raising a reve- 
nue by such a tax. But the people were not to be 
cajoled. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 1/5 

Matters continued in this state until the Boston Port 
Bill was passed by Parliament, by which, for the punish- 
ment of the Boston people for the destruction of the 
tea in Boston harbor, the port of Boston was shut up and 
the commerce of the town destroyed. This was felt to 
be a high-handed act, the exertion of imperial power 
which the colonies would not and could not recognize. 
All America was immediately excited, and things rapidly 
proceeded to a culmination. Nothing more unwise 
could have been done by the ministry, for it was not 
only felt to be a gross outrage, as, granted that power 
in the one case, every port in America might, by the 
stroke of the royal pen, be closed, and America impov- 
erished, ruined, in an instant; but also it excited the 
sympathies of the people and called forth their efforts 
to atone for the loss of commerce and trade by gifts to 
relieve the wants of the martyr city. 

Eddis, who was living in Annapolis at this time, being 
the surveyor of customs there, and getting his impres- 
sions from what he saw around him, wrote home, "All 
America is in a flame. I hear strange language every 
day. The colonists are ripe for any measures that will 
tend to the preser^^ation of what they call their natural 
liberty. I enclose you the resolves of our citizens. They 
have caught tlie general contagion. Expresses are flying 
from province to province. It is the universal opinion 
here that the mother country cannot support a contention 
with their settlements if they abide steady to the letter 
and spirit of their association." 

Maryland also immediately moved forward on definite 
lines. Something was to be done to indicate the purpose 
of the people, and so on June the twenty-second, 1774, in 



176 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

the midst of all this agitation, the people of the colony 
assembled by their representatives in convention, and 
from that time forth the revolution was completed. The 
governor, whom they practically dispossessed, was not, it 
is true, the royal governor, nor did they deny the royal 
authority; but it was the governor who represented the 
proprietary Harford. They henceforth controlled their 
own destiny. This convention was composed of the 
best and ablest men of the colony, and while their delib- 
erations were without any of the recklessness that might 
have been feared from a popular assembly convened at 
such a time, there was in all their actions and resolves 
clearness and decision of aim. The convention con- 
tinually extended its functions as the troubles continued, 
so that at last, though Governor Eden still remained in 
the colony, it came to be recognized as the expression 
of the sovereign power and authority of the State. 

The resolutions passed by the convention when it 
assembled were such as no man could mistake. By the 
first they accepted the cause of Boston and Massachusetts 
as their own, and proceeded to devise agreements for an 
entire cessation of trade with Great Britain, both import 
and export, an irritating defiance offered the king of Eng- 
land, as if Great Britain were more dependent upon 
America than America upon her. They professed sorrow 
for the British merchants, possibly a satirical fling, but 
they must insist on maintaining the dignity and indepen- 
dence of America in the matter in hand. They also 
refused to send exports to the West Indies, should such 
a measure be deemed expedient by the General Congress. 
They provided for the relief of the distressed inhabitants 
of Boston, now cruelly deprived of the means of procur- 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. IJJ 

ing for themselves subsistence, by starting a subscription 
among the residents of the colony. They thank William 
Pitt and such others as had espoused their cause in Eng- 
land, the patrons and friends of liberty. They appointed 
deputies to attend a general congress to effect one general 
plan of conduct operating on the commercial connection 
of the colonies with the mother country, for the relief of 
Boston, and the preservation of American liberty. And 
further they resolved that this province will break off all 
trade and dealings with that colony, province or town, 
which shall decline or refuse to come nito the general 
plan which may be adopted by the colonies. This was 
the Maryland platform. 

And that the people meant all that was said by their 
deputies was soon made evident. For within four months 
of their assembling a like opportunity was given them 
to what had before been given to Boston, when a vessel 
arrived in Annapolis harbor having as part of its cargo 
a small consignment of tea, or, as the people had learned 
to call it, "the detestable weed." The question imme- 
diately arose. What shall be done with it? The vessel 
had been duly entered at the custom-house and the duty 
paid on the tea, so that to forbid its landing and send it 
back, as was done with the stamped paper, would have 
been useless for the purpose of protest. Upon this the 
people came together and forbade its landing, in the first 
place, and then adjourned to secure a larger meeting of 
the citizens of the surrounding country. The citizens of 
Annapolis, however, would not wait for this; and though 
the owner of the vessel and the consignees offered to 
destroy the tea and to make ample apology for their 
conduct, still the people's wrath was not appeased, nor 



178 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

was it till the owner offered to destroy vessel and cargo 
with his own hands. 

It will be observed that all the parties concerned in the 
importation knew exactly what they were doing. The 
agitation of the question had been going on since 1767^ 
the spirit of the people was fully known, and the act of 
the owners of the vessel could only be construed to be 
a defiance to the public will, founded possibly upon the 
notion that the people were not sincere in their decla- 
rations. The vessel and cargo were destroyed, burned to- 
the water's edge, and that not by night, nor by masked 
men, but at the requirement of the best men of the city^ 
publicly, in the light of day. 

Public sentiment in Maryland was further exhibited at 
this time by its course in regard to the resolves of the 
Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia, Septem- 
ber the fifth, 1774. The action of that body was without 
qualification. It represented the American feeling and 
the American determination. While loth to break with 
the mother country, yet continuance of union with her 
could only be on the one basis: England must respect 
all rights and the dignity of America. The troubles 
about this question of taxation had now been going on 
since the year 1765, and apparently the mother country 
was as determined to have her own way as ever in spite 
of all appeals and protests. In fact, misunderstanding 
the unwillingness of the colonies to proceed to extrem- 
ities, she had become more and more ruthless in her 
bearing and conduct. Her assertions of imperial domain 
had become the more extravagant, and the rights of 
home government in the colonies had been more and 
more ignored. New York had felt the royal wrath in 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 



179 



having its assembly suspended because it refused to pro- 
vide quarters for the EngHsh troops. But that was a 
small matter to what Massachusetts was now called on 
to endure. Liberties it had enjoyed ever since the land- 
ing of the Pilgrims were now canceled, and an old law 
from the days of the tyranny of Henry the Eighth was 
brought into force, in empowering the governor to send 
any persons engaged in the destruction of the tea to 
England for trial. Troops also were sent to America, 
and General Gage, the commander-in-chief of the troops, 
was made governor of Massachusetts. It was imperial- 
ism that recognized no rights in the provinces, and we 
cannot wonder at the position assumed by the Conti- 
nental Congress. 

That position was one in which courage was mixed 
with conviction. There was no desire to rebel against 
the mother country, but there was a determination not to 
yield as slaves. Appeals were made to the king and 
people of Great Britain, and until those appeals were 
heeded and responded to, in a gracious and honorable 
spirit, intercourse must cease. They could even still 
endure the manifestations of tyranny, but not be a party 
to it. And so their resolutions of non-importation of 
everything from Great Britain and Ireland, directly and 
indirectly. British goods were to be excluded as such, 
and could not be brought into the colonies from any 
place whatever. East India teas, also, were forbidden, 
from whatever quarter of the world they might seek to 
enter the colonial ports, because they were in the hands 
of an English monopoly. The congress also resolved 
against the export of American products, though sus- 
pending the operation of this resolution for one year, 



l80 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

after which, if the troubles were not settled, the export 
of every article from America to Great Britain, Ireland 
and the West Indies was to cease. 

These were radical measures, amounting to absolute 
and entire non-intercourse. Some thought they might 
prove a relief and cause an adjustment of differences; 
but if they failed in that, any one could see that they 
meant an attempt at coercion on the part of England, 
and with that a war of desolation, out of which the 
colonies must come free and independent states, or else 
a broken-spirited and enslaved mass without a future. 

And what did Maryland think of the position assumed? 
By her convention that assembled the following No- 
vember she heartily approved all that was done. Her 
own delegates had contributed to the resolutions of the 
congress, and they were recognized as voicing the sen- 
timent of the people of the State. Committees also were 
formed to carry out the recommendations of the con- 
gress. Correspondence was kept up between the dif- 
ferent portions of the province. Information was diffused 
as widely as possible and the people kept instructed in 
regard to every new cause of suspicion or anxiety. 
Correspondence also was established between this colony 
and the others, and all matters of general moment in one 
part of the country were immediately made known in 
every other part. The British ministry had dreaded 
this association of the colonies in a congress, and well 
it might, for the effect at once was to unite the whole 
country in one common purpose and one common sen- 
timent, and to give it confidence in its ability to with- 
stand the whole power of the British empire. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. l8l 

Things also now moved forward rapidly in Maryland. 
Expression of the people's will was not to be confined to 
words. In December, 1774, it was resolved by the Con- 
vention that if the act of Parliament in regard to Massa- 
chusetts Bay was attempted to be carried out by force, 
or if the act to tax the colonies was attempted to be 
executed by force, in Maryland or in any other colony, 
then Maryland would use her whole power by force to 
resist such attempt. Farmers, also, were urged to cul- 
tivate such things as would be needed in case of war, 
and the citizens of the colony, between fifteen and sixty 
years of age, were urged to form themselves into com- 
panies, to equip themselves with arms, and to engage in 
military exercises. The counties, also, were called upon 
to raise money for the purchase of arms and ammunition. 
And all this was done. Any one that was indifferent, or 
supposed to be antagonistic to the common cause, was 
put under the ban and kept under constant surveillance 
of the suspicious eyes of the patriots. 

In this way matters passed on toward the consumma- 
tion. The king, as we have seen, was now and had been 
for several years, and continued to be for years to come, 
the director of the affairs of England, the power behind 
the ministry and parliament greater than either of them. 
Even the will of the English people in the matter of 
English affairs was ignored and contemned, as the action 
of Parliament towards Wilkes shows, who was three 
several times elected by the electors of Middlesex and 
as often rejected by the House of Commons. The will 
of the colonies, therefore, could hardly receive considera- 
tion at his hands. Their opposition was regarded as 
rebellion that must be subdued. But contempt was met 



1 82 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

with contempt and force was answered with force. Eng- 
land might send over soldiers to intimidate, but the 
colonies prepared to meet soldiers with soldiers. We 
know of the Continental army that was organized after 
the battle of Lexington. Maryland had also her separate 
colonial organization. Mr. Eddis, before quoted, writing 
in July, 1775, said " Government is now almost totally 
annihilated and power transferred to the multitude. 
Speeches become dangerous, letters are intercepted, con- 
fidence betrayed, and every measure evidently tends to 
the most fatal extremities. The sword is drawn, and 
without some providential change of measures the blood 
of thousands will be shed in this unnatural contest. The 
inhabitants of this province are incorporated under mili- 
tary regulations, and apply the greater part of their time 
to the different branches of discipline. In Annapolis 
there are two complete companies, in Baltimore seven, 
and in every district of this province the majority of the 
people are actually under arms." 

In this state matters continued in Maryland. It was 
armed expectation, and hope of better things. There was 
no desire for separation. At any time England could 
have recovered the loyalty of the colony had it receded 
from its extreme and profitless assumption. It was 
stubbornly asserting a privilege which brought it no 
gain and was already costing it and its merchants vast 
sums of money. The hope, therefore, was that England 
would recede. So Maryland declared in January, 1776, 
that it did not want separation, but only to preserve its 
rights. Entitled to freedom, however great the love of 
fatherland, they were determined to maintain that free- 
dom at the hazard of their lives and fortunes. 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 1 83 

This hope of escape from a final separation from 
England controlled the conduct of the Convention for 
months, after even the people themselves had felt that 
such an end was now inevitable. The Convention was 
excessively conservative, and it was only when the people 
tittered their voice, by public meetings held in various 
places in the province, that at last the Convention felt 
justified in taking the final step and authorizing the 
Declaration of Independence of the colonies, and their 
erection into free and independent states. But having 
authorized the delegates to the General Congress to take 
part in the declaration, Maryland proceeded to make 
such a declaration herself in her own behalf, calling upon 
her citizens to join cordially in defense of their common 
rights and in the maintenance of the freedom of their 
own and their sister colonies. 

Nor was her conduct less clear and determined 
throughout the struggle. The whole period of active 
hostilities was a time that tried men's souls. Disaster 
sometimes followed disaster, defeat in the open field, 
anxiety in the council, a diminished army, narrow re- 
sources for the support of the army, a small and widely 
scattered population, an immense territory for the carry- 
ing on of military operations. It was surely a time that 
tried men's souls. When we remember the civil war of 
1 86 1, and call to mind the anxiety that was often enter- 
tained, and that notwithstanding the resources of the 
country both as regards men and stores; when we also 
remember the depressing influences of defeat, and how 
some who were boldest in prosperity became the first to 
despair, we can get some idea of what must have been 
the feelings of the period. Only as they were sustained 



1 84 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

by high resolves, a consciousness of the issue at stake, 
and the great rights which were to be forever forfeited 
by ultimate defeat, could they have endured the long 
trial. 

But tliey did, and Maryland's record was as bright 
as that of any of her sister states, and the heroism of her 
devotion to the cause as definitely sustained. Conserva- 
tive by nature and by the training of her people, which, 
as determined by a definite charter, gave certain fixed 
characteristics to her administration, she was slow in her 
steps, carried away by no words of the agitation, not 
whirled along by a sudden and unreasoning enthusiasm. 
But when the time came to act she was at her post, her 
sons were ready with their assent to the great Declara- 
tion; not acting upon their own private wills, but as 
deputies duly instructed, upon the will of the Maryland 
people clearly expressed. And it was that spirit she 
manifested throughout the whole long, anxious period. 

The battle of Lexington, in April, 1775, aroused the 
country; but the battle of Bunker Hill summoned the 
levies, and Maryland responded to the summons. And 
so from that time on Maryland troops were always found 
in the Continental armies. In the earlier years they 
distinguished themselves in the North under Washington, 
as on Long Island, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania; and 
in the later years they equally distinguished themselves 
in the South under Greene, being prominent in every 
engagement, and often the great resource when danger 
of defeat was impending. She justified her words by 
her deeds. Her contributions to the regular army in 
1778 were thirty-three hundred men, and during the 
whole war twenty-three thousand, — ^being one-twelfth of 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. I85 

the whole number sent out by the thirteen colonies. The 
war expenses of the State were seven millions six hun- 
dred thousand dollars, being two-thirds the value of all 
her real estate. Her losses in population, also, were 
exceedingly heavy, being from all causes, slaves carried 
of¥, emigration to England and elsewhere, and the casu- 
alties of the war, sixty-six thousand in seven years. 
These figures may be small now, but they were immense 
then, and indicate her devotion to the cause and the 
burdens she was called on to endure. 

She was blessed indeed in not having the enemy to 
harry her territory, the operations of the war being 
carried on either north or south of her; but that only 
makes her interest and zeal in the cause the more 
notable. For often a people will rise in their own 
defense who will be supine when the enemy is at 2. dis- 
tance and harrying some other territory. The raising 
of her regiments being her own voluntary act, her ab- 
sorption in the cause in hand is altogether manifest. 

As an indication of the appreciation in which she was 
held, we have the following letter from the commander- 
in-chief to the governor of the State: 

To Thomas Sim Lee, Governor of Maryland. 

Camp near York, Oct., 1781. 

Dear Sir: 

Enclosed I have the honor of transmitting to your 
excellency the terms upon which Lord Cornwallis has 
surrendered the garrisons of York and Gloucester. 

We have not been able yet to get an account of pris- 
oners, ordnance or stores in the different departments. 



1 86 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

But from the best general report there will be (officers 
included) upwards of seven thousand men, besides sea- 
men, more than seventy pieces of brass ordnance and a 
hundred of iron, with the stores, as also other valuable 
articles. 

My present engagements will not allow me to add 
more than my congratulations on this happy event, and 
to express the high sense I have of the powerful aid 
which I have derived from the State of Maryland in 
complying with my every request to the execution of it. 
The prisoners will be divided between Winchester in 
Virginia and Fort Frederick in Maryland. 

With every sentiment of the most perfect esteem and 
regard, 

I have the honor to be 

Your excellency's most obedient and humble servant, 

G. Washington. 



TENTH LECTURE. 

Odds and Ends of Maryland Legislation. 

Covering a period of about one hundred and fifty 
years, it would be only natural to expect that colonial 
legislation in Maryland, would exhibit many oddities and 
peculiarities viewed from the standpoint of our present 
notions of what strictly pertains to government. Be- 
sides, that was an age of transition from the strong 
paternal government as administered by Queen Eliza- 
beth and others of the Tudor line, to the freer constitu- 
tion of the British empire, as it was after the Revolution 
in England, and as it has expanded within the present 
century; and on this account we might expect to find 
striking incongruities. We do find such, in the Ameri- 
can colonies as everywhere else. 

But the position of Maryland was peculiar, both as to 
the nature of her government and the character of her 
allegiance. These fostered a more independent spirit, 
so that advanced notions concerning personal and politi- 
cal freedom found more readily a home within the 
colony than in the adjoining regions. Such things as 
the burning of witches, and the hanging or whipping of 
Quakers, and the expulsion of nonconformists in religion 
from her borders, were practically unknown. It is true 
the air was filled with monstrous notions as to the pro- 
priety of these things, and the archives of Maryland 
indicate that her people felt in some measure the con- 
tagion; but practically the Quakers were free from 



l88 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

active persecution, the witches pHed their instruments of 
torture and raised their storms or dashed hither and 
thither on broomsticks, and no one became aware of the 
fact. And though recusants might feel the weight of 
public disapproval in the loss of political franchise, yet 
their life and property were safe and the private or pub- 
lic enjoyment of the liberty of worship was secured. 

For meeting-liouses of various names were found 
everywhere, or else chapels on private estates, where 
master and servant and family and neighbor might 
assemble to enjoy unmolested the rites of their peculiar 
worship. The legislative record of Maryland will com- 
pare more than favorably with that of any government 
on earth for the time extending from 1634 to the end of 
the American Revolution. There was enough to show 
that her people were of English blood and training, but 
yet divergence enough also to show a diverse and 
greatly elevated tone. 

In these latter days when the anxiety of lawmakers 
seems to be to make the way of the transgressor as little 
tmcomfortable as possible, when malefactors are housed 
and warmed and fed with a care that would do honor 
to an institution where the most estimable of the poor 
were to be entertained, when science is brought to bear 
for appliances that shall make the taking off of even the 
most brutal as painless as possible, we are a little apt to 
be shocked by what we read of two hundred years ago. 
For they were not by any means so careful then, and 
dealt out their inflictions with a liberality and an open- 
ness of hand that would horrify our fastidiousness, A 
drawing, hanging and quartering was then one of the 
sights of the day, for which gentlemen and ladies of 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. 1 89 

rank and refinement sought choice positions for obser- 
vation. 

Possibly they had not so many means of amusement 
as we have, and possibly they were a httle nearer to 
nature in the rough. But so it was. And also they had 
many more opportunities of amusement of this kind, as 
capital punishment was dealt out with a liberal hand 
which rather amazes our present minds. Felonies, in 
which life and limb were the penalty, were far more 
numerous than our laws create. Our philosophical 
philanthropists tell us that the prevalence of the death 
penalty created the criminals, that men can get so used 
to seeing other people die, — drawn, hanged, quartered, 
— that they the more readily yield themselves up to the 
same attractive process. All we can say is, their pro- 
cesses belonged to their day, ours belong to ours, both 
probably wise in our generations. 

But not only of capital punishment. There was a 
certain shamelessness about all penalties. A criminal 
now finds his refuge in prison, shut out from the gaze 
of passers-by. But not so then. The pillory and the 
stocks were very common instruments for the punish- 
ment of slight misdemeanors, and were set up at con- 
venient places throughout the colony. Every court- 
house was to be provided, and sometimes, when the 
court-house was too far ofif, a position near the church 
was selected as well. We shall see a little later on for 
what class of misdemeanants this place was chosen. The 
ducking-stool also was set up in the most convenient 
place of each county. This was for the accommodation 
of scolds, and doubtless even the sight of it had a cool- 
ing influence upon a hot temper. Certainly after one 



190 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

experience the sight or mention would be sufficient 
For there never was a scold yet, man or woman, that a 
sudden bath of cold water would not cure. The duck- 
ing-stool was a most beneficent institution. 

Another instrument ordered at the same time with the 
above, namely in 1663, was the branding irons, one with 
the letter R, another with the letter H. One reason 
given for these instruments was that the colony had not 
houses — that is, penitentiary and jails — for imprisoning 
evil-doers, and so such means of punishment had to be 
pursued. That was a reason for urgency, it is true, and 
commanders of the several counties were ordered to 
proceed in providing such instruments, under penalty 
for delay. But beside that, it suited the temper of the 
time. 

The laws, however, went a good deal farther than 
this. For in 1650 it was enacted that if any one gave 
false witness under oath, or suborned another to per- 
jury, he should be nailed to the pillory and lose both 
ears, or put to other corporal shame or correction as the 
court should judge. And if any one struck an officer or 
witness or any other person in presence of the court, he 
was to lose the offending member. That surely was 
hideous and at the same time exceedingly foolish, as the 
efifect of the punishment could only be to expose the 
sufferer to pauperism as well as to perpetual shame. It 
is evident in all this that Christianity, however much it 
had leavened the private conduct of men, had not gotten 
down to the political administration of society. Another 
instance of the kind was presented in the ordinance by 
which, when persons were charged with mutinous and 
seditious speeches or practices, or when attempts, with- 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. IQI 

out force, were used, tending to divert the obedience of 
the people from the Rt. Hon. Cecilius Calvert, or the 
governor of the province, and were found guilty, their 
punishment could be imprisonment during pleasure, not 
exceeding one whole year, or fine, banishment, boring 
of the tongue, slitting the nose, cutting off one or both 
ears, whipping, branding with a red-hot iron m the hand 
or forehead,— any one or more of these as the pro- 
vincial court might think fit. 

But we have not got down to the bottom yet. The 
recklessness with which the death penalty was admin- 
istered is amazing, and that with very extravagant bru- 
tality. In 1642 it was made a felony if any mdented 
servant should run away from his or her master, and for 
any one also knowingly to accompany such runaway; 
and the penalty was hanging. The lord proprietor, it is 
true or his lieutenant-general, had the power to commute 
such punishment, though in that case the penalty could 
not be for more than seven years' service; so that a 
man's life, according to the standard of the time in the 
province, was valued at seven years' servitude and might 
be a good deal less. Human life was, therefore, exceed- 
ingly cheap. 

The temper of those times is strongly brought out 
by the proposed enactments in the Assembly of 1638-9, 
which, however, did not become laws, though read a 
second time and ordered to be engrossed. According to 
one of these, treason might be against the king, the 
queen his wife, or against his son and heir, and it might 
be committed by levying war, adhering to a foreign 
prince or state, such being a declared enemy of the king, 
or by counterfeiting the king's great or privy seal or his 



192 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

coin. Or, again, it might be against the lord proprietary, 
or his Heutenant-general within the province, and it might 
be committed by adliering to the Indians or any foreign 
prince for making war upon the colony. This was the 
crime. And the penalty was drawing, hanging, quarter- 
ing of the man, and tlie drawing and burning of a 
woman, — not quartered, I suppose, because the stake 
did not leave any subject for the axe. A man, however, 
who was wealthy enough to own one thousand acres of 
land, the lord of a manor, was to have the indulgence 
of being beheaded. 

We have all heard of the benefit of clergy, which 
meant that if any one possessed such learning as might 
reasonably be required of a clergyman, — and the standard 
was not high, — he was to enjoy certain privileges before 
the law. We have this recognized at this time by the 
legislators of Mar}4and; for at this session, after describ- 
ing certain felonies, the penalty of which was hanging, 
the proviso was added that if the offender can read 
clerk-like, in the judgment of the court, then instead of 
hanging he shall lose his hand or be burned in the hand 
or forehead with a hot iron, and shall forfeit all his lands, 
saving to the wife her dower. The benefit of clergy 
was not therefore immunity. It only saved one from 
the halter for the first ofifense, but sent him out branded 
with indelible marks of infamy. A man that was worthy 
of the "benefit" would prefer probably to do without it. 

The character of the ofifenses, also, took a wide range. 
Burglary, robbery, and such as belong to all criminal 
legislation, of course, are recognized, and probably every- 
thing that is recognized now as a crime was recognized 
then, with more beside; so that the wisdom of later 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. I93 

legislators has been chiefly manifested in lopping off, 
pruning down the offenses embraced in the criminal code. 
Slandering, backbiting, "scandalizing the good name" 
of any one, was severely punished.. Blasphemy, "idol- 
atry, the worshiping of a false God," polygamy, sac- 
rilege, sorcery, sodomy, rape, all are instanced, and the 
penalty hanging. Blasphemy was always abhorrent to 
the colonists; and again and again in the course of the 
provincial history do we find the Assembly doing what it 
can to repress it. The act concerning religion of 1649 
is a fair representation of the tone and spirit of the pro- 
vince on this, as on other matters, and in it hanging 
and the forfeiture of goods are provided for any that 
"blaspheme God, that is, curse Him, or deny our 
Saviour Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, or deny the 
Holy Trinity." 

As far as legislation went, the doctrine and the prac- 
tice of the people were abundantly cared for. But the 
people must have had a strong propensity to wander, 
seeing so much legislation was necessary. Though in 
bar to that it must be remembered that in the beginning 
it was a " general assembly," that is, everybody sat in it, 
and legislation was only a provision against what might 
be. If all reports, however, say true, the legislation 
was not found to presei-ve either the religion or the 
morals inviolate. 

The colonists evidently soon became jealous of courts, 
juries and lawyers. They made a good law in 1642 in the 
matter of debts, providing that if any man who had 
been accustomed to labor should make a debt which he 
could not pay, the creditor could require his personal 
service to the amount of his debt, the creditor mean- 



194 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

while being required to provide necessaries for the 
man's family. It saved the poor debtor from prison. 
Others, who were above the condition of personal ser- 
vice, might be imprisoned according to the barbarous 
usage of that day and for many years after. They also 
endeavored to prevent a litigious spirit by making the 
risks heavy, so that whosoever might be cast in a case, 
plaintiff or defendant, should be subject to a fine. It 
was a severe law, for it took for granted that the man 
that lost ought to have known that he had no case; 
whereas where is the man that goes to law that does not 
believe that he has a right to recover? While how many, 
also, do fail of a fair award, not because their cause is not 
good, but because in their case law, or precedent, or 
custom, or the stupidity, not to say dishonesty, of the 
judge or jury may be against them? It was something 
like that old Greek law that required that every man who 
would propose an amendment to the code, should do it 
at his peril with a rope around his neck, to become a 
halter if his proposition was rejected. 

In the same line was another act passed in 1642, by 
w^hich, if when a jury rendered a verdict, the judge had 
reason to believe the jury partial or wilful, he might 
charge another jury to enquire and try by the same evi- 
dence, and if they should find contrary to the former 
jury, all the former panel might be fined at the discretion 
of the judge. The juryman's office then was not a 
sinecure, for he had not only to care for the party in- 
volved, but had the additional care for himself. He was, 
as it were, a possible party in every case. 

Nor did they have much more faith in attorneys than 
they had in the parties in a suit or in the jurymen. As 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. I95 

the whole administration of justice was in Lord Bal- 
timore's hands in virtue of his patent, we are not so sure 
as to their faith in his judges, for all such were appointed 
by him. In respect to the attorneys, they expressed 
themselves freely. In 1669, incident to the impeachment 
of a lawyer for receiving a fee for furthering the cause 
of the plaintiff' till he had recovered his property, and 
then receiving a further fee from the defendant to replevin 
the same, a joint committee was appointed by a con- 
ference of the two houses of the Assembly to report on 
the grievances of the colony, the fourth clause of which 
was " that the privileged attorneys are one of the grand 
grievances of the country." 

Nor was this only a spasmodic burst. Five years 
after an act was passed by the Assembly, in which it was 
declared that many of the good people of this province 
are much burthened and their causes much delayed by 
the abuse of persons practising as attorneys and by the 
excessive fees exacted; and also by the great number of 
attorneys, whereby many and unnecessary and trouble- 
some suits are raised and fomented. The act was 
entitled an Act to reform attorneys, councillors, etc. And 
then the act went on to provide that a certain number of 
honest and able attorneys be admitted, nominated and 
sworn by his excellency the captain-general to be at- 
torneys, councillors, etc.; all others being forbidden to 
practise. 

And the further provision was made for* the highest 
fees allowable for each and any case in the several 
courts of the province; that for the court of chancery 
being eight hundred pounds of tobacco, for the pro- 
vincial court four hundred pounds, for the county court 



196 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

two hundred pounds. Further provision was also made 
for the heavy punishment of any attorney that should 
receive fees beyond the amount allowed, the fine being 
two thousand pounds of tobacco and the disbarring of 
the offender in the courts of the province. Lawyers, 
however, have never been a favorite, though maybe a 
favored class with the people, being a necessary evil 
in the present disjointed world whom the people cannot 
do without and do not want to do with; and they the 
people have consequently avenged themselves by abus- 
ing them upon every occasion. 

Among the laws of the colony there are frequently 
found enactments providing for the observance of Sun- 
day, for temperance, for morality. As regards the first, 
they never went as far as was done in the Puritan 
colonies of the North, though the desecration of the 
day by fishing, gunning, drinking and kindred methods 
of indulgence was always reprobated. Kissing one's 
wife was not regarded as a heinous violation, and con- 
sequently was not visited either with fine or flogging. 
In this the Maryland code was more liberal. At one 
time an attempt was made to compel church-going, but 
that soon came to nothing; for the churches were inac- 
cessible to the great body of the people, and, besides, 
there was not enough of them to accommodate even a 
fourth of the people. 

The temperance laws, however, were of a practical 
character, and were probably to a large extent enforced; 
that is, temperance, not total abstinence. For this at the 
time was an unknown question in the colonies as well as 
in the mother country. Liquor was used almost univer- 
sally, and, as we would say, almost excessively in all 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. 1 97 

f 

classes of society. In Maryland we find a church vestry 
adopting a standing order for one quart of rum and 
lemons and sugar equivalent, for every vestry meeting, to 
be paid for out of the church funds ; and in England, in the 
palmiest days of Queen Anne, the best men of the day 
thought it no disgrace to drink themselves under the 
table, and that regularly; and long since that time 
"drunk for a penny and dead drunk for twopence" 
was the attractive sign over the gin-shops of London. 

Still in Maryland they tried to restrain. And they 
began with the drinker. Drunkenness was punished, 
one of the first laws of the province providing that for 
" drunkenness, which is drinking to excess to the notable 
perturbation of any organ of sense or motion," the 
offender shall forfeit to the lord proprietary thirty pounds 
of tobacco or five shillings sterling, or otherwise shall 
be whipped or by some other corporal shame or pun- 
ishment corrected for every such excess at the discretion 
of the judge. If the man was a servant, and not able to 
pay the fine, he was to be imprisoned or set in the stocks 
or bilbos, fasting, for twenty-four hours. Subsequent 
laws made the punishment even more severe; that of 
1658 providing that for the first ofifense the punishment 
should be six hours in the stocks or a fine of one hun- 
dred pounds of tobacco; for the second, whipping or 
three hundred pounds; and for the third offense and 
conviction the offender was to be adjudged a person 
infamous, and as such incapable of voting or bearing 
office for the space of three years. That such a law was 
not a brtitiim fulmen one of his lordship's councillors, 
Thomas Gerard, discovered; for it being proven that he 
was intoxicated, he was banished tlie province and all his 



198 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

property, real and personal, forfeited. The governor 
remitted the banishment, but his other losses were 
allowed to stand. 

Beside treating the drunkard in this way, they tried 
also to restrain liquor-selling. Ordinaries were opened 
in various parts of the colony, one being in the State 
House itself; but care was taken that only persons of 
good character should be licensed to keep them. This 
is different from the present rule in Maryland and in 
most other places; for nothing is easier than for any 
man to secure a license. If he abuses his opportunity, 
and his ordinary becomes a nuisance, his license may be 
taken away. Though this rarely prevents a man from 
going on, some one being found to take out a license 
in his own name for the odier's use. Attempt was also 
made to restrict the number, and limit by name, the 
places where the ordinaries could be kept. They looked 
upon liquors as they looked upon lawyers, as above 
noted, as a necessity, believing that danger existed only 
in the superabundance, whether of drink or drinking 
houses, and that it became them to provide against the 
excess. 

And as of liquors so of morality in general. Lewdness 
was suppressed as far as possible. There were among 
the immigrants to the province from the beginning some 
who were low in. morals as they were in intelligence. 
Even the marriage of white women with negro men was 
not unknown, but was looked upon with such horror 
that any woman so doing became by the marriage a 
slave during the life of her husband, and the children 
slaves for life, as their father was. Law, not anarchy, 
was predominant in Maryland from the start, but it had 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. I99 

a heavy load to carry. It did wonderfully well to main- 
tain its balance as it did, with the constant incoming tide, 
often of the offscourings of the old world. But though 
with difificulty, yet it struggled along, and at last was 
able to hand over into better times a people taught so to 
recognize law that for its maintenance they would give 
up all beside. 

What was the bearing of Maryland toward the 
Quakers? I ask this question because it is a crucial 
one in determining the spirit of Maryland in regard to 
religious liberty and religious prejudice. We know how 
they were treated in New England, beaten and hanged, 
imprisoned and compelled to suffer cold and hunger to 
a degree almost beyond belief; while their persecutors 
were not the brutal mob who in their ignorance would 
do anything for excitement's sake or to gratify a savage 
passion. Those who persecuted the Quakers in New 
England were the best and most honored in the land. 
Why did Marylanders not do the same? Did they love 
religion less? Not by any means. Though the great 
majority did not enjoy religious privileges as they were 
possessed in the Northern colonies, yet that was their 
misfortune, not their fault. The revenues of the province 
went into the pockets of a man who claimed them as 
his right, and who by his religious creed and private 
interests Combined, was constrained wholly to neglect 
the religious welfare of the people, save of the few of 
his own faith. The people also were so scattered that 
combmation was almost impossible, while also even 
among the majority there was such diversity of religious 
belief that voluntary association for the support of any 
one church was impossible. But as soon as opportunity 



200 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

was offered on the Protestant Revolution, we see their 
longing and resolute desire to have all the facilities for 
religious worship. 

Maryland differed from the New England colonies in 
her treatment of the Quakers, because a political and not 
a religious basis was that on which she stood. Ic was 
with the eyes of statesmanship, and not of narrow religious 
bigotry that she looked at the question. And her claim 
to religious toleration rests far more on such a spirit as 
exhibited in such circumstances, than on the mere i\ct 
Concerning Religion, that is filled rather with curses than 
benedictions. She had been, and was, and continued to 
be, tolerant of all classes and names of Christians, when 
that law was promulgated. It only expressed what was 
the political faith of Maryland from the beginning. 

It is true, as was stated in the beginning of this lecture, 
that Maryland passed her laws, or rather orders, for it was 
the work of the Council and not of the Assembly, against 
Quakers ; for it was with them as with the early Christians, 
a sect that was " everywhere spoken against." It is also to 
be remembered that in 1658, when the greatest jealousy 
of the Quakers was manifested, the Puritan influence was 
predominant in Maryland, and that Governor Fendall, 
who was the adherent and mouthpiece of that influence, 
was the executive of the colony during the period when 
the various orders were passed. It was at this time the 
extreme violence raged in Massachusetts, three victims 
having perished in 1659 and 1660, and the last one on 
March the fourteenth, 1661. It is doubtful, however, 
whether even such persistent offenders as Thomas Thur- 
ston and Josias Cole ever felt the lash, against whom 
chiefly were the orders issued. The chief complaint also 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. 201 

against them was not concerning their reUgious belief, 
but their contempt of court, in that they would not remove 
their hats, and would not take the oath in legal proceed- 
ings. Also, they would not, according to the require- 
ments of the law, make their engagement faithfully to 
obey the laws of the province, an obligation required to 
be made by every one coming to reside within it. 

On the other hand, in 1665, we find three Quakers in a 
board of seven land commissioners of one of the counties, 
appointed to this office by the governor and council. 
This was the same year when Massachusetts, under Gov- 
ernor Bellingham, renewed in a milder way its persecution 
of the five years previous. In 1676, or about that time, 
Wenlock Christison, famous for his fortitude and suffer- 
ings, who had now finally come to Maryland, where he 
ended his days in peace and prosperity, was elected to the 
lower house of the Assembly. After him others were 
found holding the same office, as well as that of justice of 
the peace in their various counties. Maryland's record, 
thereafter, in this stands eminent. 

Nor does it stand less so when we look at the subject 
of witchcraft. However it may be argued, whether Mary- 
land did not fear the Devil so much, or whether it was less 
loyal to the Almighty than her New England contempo- 
raries, cannot be determined. Maryland people believed 
in witches, as all the world did. It was deeply imbedded 
in the religious consciousness of the day the world over. 
Even John Wesley said, long after this time, that he who 
would £rive up witchcraft must give up the Bible. Even 
the witches believed in witchcraft, and would confess thev 
were witches, in spite of all the penalties. Nor is the old 
belief entirely out of date now, but many, we hope only 



202 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

among the ignorant, regard with awe and hatred those 
whom they regard as the ministers of Satan. But every- 
body beheved in witches two hundred years ago, and 
grave and learned divines led in the crusade against these 
Devil's ministers. 

Now, what is Maryland's record? There is no use or 
pleasure in reviewing the world's record. It is too awful, 
too sad. As far as is known, never a witch suffered 
within the Maryland borders. In the year 1654, during 
a stormy passage to Maryland, the sailors on board the 
ship " Charity " (a misnomer in this case) became con- 
vinced that they must have a witch on board who was the 
cause of the storm ; and choosing a little old woman, they 
forthwith proceeded to examine her, and, of course, to 
find reason for condemning her. For in such cases, as in 
many others in all the ways of life, examination is con- 
demnation. Moved either by malignity or fear, we can 
find what we are looking for. They put her to death and 
cast her body and all that belonged to her into the sea, 
and still the storm blew on with undiminished violence. 

There was one case in Maryland itself, when a certain 
John Connor was convicted of witchcraft. But instead 
of his being executed, at the strong urgency of the lower 
house of the Assembly, he was reprieved and his death 
sentence changed into indefinite service to the governor 
and council, apparently to do such chores as came to 
hand, during the pleasure of the governor. 

That ends the whole witchcraft episode, and what a 
contrast to what was seen everywhere else! Why w^as it? 
They all believed in witches, and in the charges given 
from time to time to justices of the peace and other 
ofificers, was tliis of enquiring about witchcrafts, enchant- 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. 203 

ments, sorceries, and magic arts. But, somehow, the faith 
and the practice did not agree. This was in 1675. It was in 
1692, it will be remembered, that the Salem tragedy was 
enacted at which the mind revolts. Why was it that 
Maryland differed so from the rest of the world? The 
reason probably is the same as in the case of the treatment 
of the Quakers. The policy of the colony rested upon a 
broader basis, statesmanlike politics and not religious 
bigotry, a policy that was observed in the colony to the 
end of the colonial period. 

There is one subject it would be pleasant to be able to 
omit: Maryland's treatment of the Indians. For in this 
she was not better than the other colonies. Injustice, 
cruelty, brutality too frequently inspired her legislation 
and her conduct. She feared the Indians, and her fear 
blinded the eyes of her administrators to their rights and 
to the commonest principles of justice and humanity. 
This policy was pursued until even the small band of 
peaceful Indians who sought to dwell on good terms 
within the territory, which had once been all their own, 
gradually disappeared. Whether God's vengeance has 
yet overtaken this nation for all its barbarity to the 
aborigines of the country, is a problem which the coming 
time will have to solve. 

Another subject also I would be glad to omit, the legis- 
lation concerning the Roman Catholics after the days of 
the Protestant Revolution. They were but a small min- 
ority of the people, dividing with the members of the 
Church of England one-fourth of the whole population. 
This was the testimony of Lord Baltimore. Still, how- 
ever, though so small a fraction, they were feared. Anxiety 
was from time to time expressed that they would rise and, 



204 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

combining with the Indians or with the French, would 
work havoc in the province. And the consequence was, 
they were always repressed and the means sought to pre- 
vent their increase in numbers. 

Thus they were defranchised by the Test Oath, after 
Maryland became a royal colony, a disavowal of transub- 
stantiation being requisite for the enjoyment of the political 
privileges of citizenship. In 1 704, by an act of the Assem- 
bly, it was sought to prevent the growth of popery by for- 
bidding the exercise of spiritual functions by the Roman 
priesthood. Also members of that church were forbidden 
to engage in teaching the youth of the colony. At the 
same session, however, this severity was mitigated by per- 
mission granted for spiritual ministrations in private 
families and private chapels. In 171 5 a severe law was 
passed, by which if a Protestant father died, and his widow 
should be a Roman Catholic, the children should be 
removed from her custody, " to save them from popery." 
The expense of their education was to be borne by their 
father's estate. In 171 6 and 171 8, after the rising in Eng- 
land in behalf of the Pretender, the sensitiveness and fears 
of the people of the colony were indicated by a renewal 
of the restrictive laws, so that if a person was suspected 
of being a Roman Catholic, the Test Oath could be 
administered as a qualification for voting. 

Also, early in the century, dread was excited by the 
introduction of Roman Catholics from abroad, and a tax 
was imposed by the legislature of 1708, of twenty shillings 
upon all Irish servants of that faith brought in. Down 
later in the century, at the beginning of the French War, 
an attempt was made, in providing for the expenses of the 
war, to lay a double tax upon the Roman Catholics. The 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. 20$ 

Upper house would not consent to this, and so it never 
became a law. But it shows the animus of the people. 
The motives for this attempt are said to have been two- 
fold; first, that the French and the Roman Catholics were 
associated in the people's minds as equally enemies of the 
province, because of their common religion; secondly, 
that certain persons were specially offensive to the lower 
house, whom it was its desire to reach. 

Such things, however painful, are facts, growing out of 
the suspicions and bitter feelings of the day. The Revo- 
lution, both in England and Maryland, had its origin in 
the dread and abhorrence of Romanism as exhibited in 
the despotism of James the Second and the persecuting 
zeal of Louis the Fourteenth in the revocation of the 
edict of Nantes, and the horrible sufiferings of the Hugue- 
nots. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at, though it is 
to be deplored, that the people stood in constant dread 
and vented their fears in acts of injustice and violence. 

I have referred in a previous lecture to the Act of 
Establishment of the Church, and to the subsequent acts 
passed, until the purpose of the people was consummated. 
For it took the people ten years to frame an act that should 
be pleasing as well to the king of England as to the 
inhabitants of the province. As it was something, how- 
ever, which they were determined to have, they persisted. 
I only refer here to the matter again to call attention to 
certain minor features of the law, and to other laws sub- 
sequently passed bearing upon the same matter. 

The purpose of that law was the moral and religious 
regeneration of the people, in which points the state of 
society was said to be extremely bad. Nor can there be 
a doubt but what it was true, and there was nothing to 



206 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

make the condition otherwise. Rehgion and education 
had both been grossly neglected, and as a consequence 
all the attempts that the Assembly had been making from 
the beginning to restrain blasphemy, profane language, 
drunkenness, and other forms of vice, and to promote a 
due or any observance of the First Day, had been utterly 
null and void. Pains and penalties are not qualified for 
moral or religious ends. 

And the Church was efifective for the end proposed, 
because the law armed it in every way for this purpose. 
For, first, the vestry as a body were the custodians of 
morality and had certain power to rebuke and warn, and 
then to inform against if the warning were not heeded. 
The Church was also used to keep the laws bearing upon 
immorality constantly before the people, for it was made 
the duty of the rector of the parish, who was chief vestry- 
man, to read publicly, four times a year, the laws of the 
province forbidding swearing, drunkenness, and the viola- 
tion of the Sabbath Day by work, fishing and gunning; 
and if he failed to do this, he exposed himself to a fine. 
We can see what a salutary effect this must have had in 
preserving a knowledge and standard of morality. It 
compelled the people to remember what was law add duty, 
and it was a constant warning to all who could not be 
influenced by a sense of duty, but who might be by a 
sense of fear. It also made wickedness shameful. We 
have seen before what was the jurisdiction of the vestry 
in certain cases of immorality. 

'But the Church, as a political institution for the sup- 
pression of vice, went farther. Under the law as finally 
passed in 1702, the vestry and wardens were to meet 
monthly, and doing so, they could bring together the 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. 20/ 

results of their observation since the last meeting, and 
report any violation of the laws that might have come to 
their notice. Vestries now have charge of the secular 
affairs of their churches, and often so little concern is felt 
for these things, that no one outside their own body 
knows or can readily find out who compose the body. 
But not so in those days. The vestry had its own pew in 
the church ; they were supposed to sit together in a seat of 
honor and authority, and they were thus kept before the 
eyes and minds of the people as officers with certain defi- 
nite duties. 

And their office they carried out with them into the 
parish daily life, as much as the minister carried his. This 
was strengthened by the law of 1723, which forbade swear- 
ing or drunkenness in the presence of a vestryman or 
churchwarden, under penalty of fine, whipping, or sitting 
in the stocks. The churchwardens had also the power 
of preserving the peace in and about the church, even to 
the point that if any one persisted in violating good order, 
he might then and there be arrested by the churchwardens 
and put in the stocks, of which, in some instances, a pair 
was set up near the church for such emergencies. 

The ideal church establishment then, as the men of 1692 
presented it, was an excellent one. That the ideal did not 
become a practical fact, is very true, as human ideals 
rarely or never do. The purpose, however, was worthy, 
and the need was imperative, and the success attained was 
highly beneficent to the moral and religious welfare of 
the whole community. The method would be strangely 
anomalous in our day, but the men of that day knew and 
adhered to what they saw was best for them. 



208 HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. 

With this we close the review of the State's earhest his- 
tory. Much might have been said that has not been, and 
some things, may be, left out that have been said. The 
purpose has been to give a series of pictures of the period, 
the century and a half from the founding of the colony to 
the time when England acknowledged that she could not 
longer call the colony her own. It was a growth from 
infancy to manhood, with the vicissitudes that belong to 
all transitional life. There were days of passion and 
violence, days of petulance and irritation. There were 
many acts of folly, and many of violence and injustice. 
Many things blur the glory and blot the page that might 
record them, especially as regards the Indian and the 
Roman Catholic. Sometimes a cringing spirit was mani- 
fested, as when in the extravagance of adulation they 
approached the throne of James the Second, on the birth 
of his son, and then with as enthusiastic adulation glorified 
William the Third as the defender of the Protestant faith 
and the liberties of the empire. 

Still, these things were only incidental, not essential. 
The people were the victims of their times, while their 
true, robust character was indicated by their progress 
through the circumstances of their day always toward a 
higher and nobler manhood, vindicating their rights 
against those who, in the front or on either hand, would 
retard their progress. King, proprietary, local influences 
in the province itself, all attempted to bar the way, to 
reduce the people to their will. The struggle also might 
be long; dissension, disputation, contention might last 
through years. The issue, however, was always the same. 
The consistent and courageous maintenance of principle 
always ensured success. 



ODDS AND ENDS OF LEGISLATION. 2O9 

For this reason the sons of the old commonwealth need 
not fear to scan closely. Their old parent is worthy of 
all honor. Whether as a lone province with peculiar 
institutions struggling toward her own broad conceptions 
of liberty; or whether as one of the galaxy of colonies, 
maintaining by cohesion with them the rights of free-born 
men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, irrespec- 
tive of the dictation of any foreign potentate; or whether 
as a state making up, by voluntary surrender of all indi- 
vidual rights that might stand in bar, one great and 
glorious nation, along with all the other states of the per- 
fect union, it is the same: Maryland is worthy of the honor 
of her sons. Let it be the effort of her sons to preserve 
always inviolate the honor that has been transmitted to 
them by those that struggled and achieved in other days. 



APPENDIX. 

Chronological Table of Events Connected with 
History of Maryland. 

1617. George Calvert made Knight. 

1 61 9. George Calvert made Secretary of State. 

1620. George Calvert championed royal pretensions in 

Parliament. 

1620. Pension bestowed on George Calvert by King 

James, of 1000 pounds sterling a year. 

1 62 1. The estate in Ireland bestowed on George Calvert 

by the King. 

1623. Charter of Avalon granted George Calvert. 

1624. George Calvert avowed conversion to Roman 

Church. 

1625. George Calvert Member of Privy Council. 
1625. George Calvert made Baron of Baltimore. 
1625. James the First died. 

1631. Kent Island settled by Claiborne. 

1632. George, first Lord Baltimore, died. 

1632. Charter for Maryland given, June 20. 

1633. Answers to anticipated objections prepared by 

Provincial of Jesuits. 

1633. Colony sailed for Maryland, Nov. 22d. 

1634. Colony landed in Maryland, March 27th. 

1635. Battle between Kent Islanders and St. Mary's 

people. 

1635. First Assembly of the province. Proceedings dis- 
allowed by Lord Baltimore. 

1637-8 Session of Provincial Assembly. 



212 APPENDIX. 

1638. Leonard Calvert, GoAernor, adjourned Assembly 

of his own prerogative. 
1638. Kent Islanders reduced to submission. 
1638. William Lewis fined for forbidding servants to 

read Protestant books. 

1638. Through this period Governor exercised preroga- 

tive of summoning particular persons to the 
Assembly. 

1639. First act for the restraint of liquors. 

1640. Troubles with Jesuits began. 

1 64 1. Questions propounded to Jesuit priests concern- 

ing claims of the Roman Church. 

1 641. Father White's " Twenty Cases," also " Memorial." 

1 64 1. Permission given to Lord Baltimore by the 
"Sacred Congregation," etc., to remove the 
Jesuits, and to grant a prefect and secular 
priests. 

1 64 1. Rosetti, Archbishop of Tarsus, to have charge of 
Maryland. 

1641. Conditions of Plantation issued, enforcing statute 
of mortmain. 

1641. " Points " to which Lord Baltimore required sub- 
scription. 

1 641. Provincial of Jesuits executed release of all lands 
held in violation of statute of mortmain. 

1 641. A form of agreement proposed by Jesuits. 

1642. Order dismissing Jesuits revoked. 
1641-2. Cruel treatment of Indians. 
1642. Indian War. 

1642. Petition of " Protestant Catholics " against Thom. 
Gerard. 

1642. Assembly passed resolution: Could not be ad- 
journed without its own consent. 



APPENDIX. 213 

1643. Leonard Calvert sailed for England. 

1644. Leonard Calvert returned to Maryland, Septem- 

ber. 
1644. Claiborne recovers Kent Island. 

1644. All leading offices in hands of Roman Catholics. 

1645. Claiborne and Ingle's rebellion; continues almost 

two years. 

1645. Father White sent prisoner to England. 

1646. Governor Calveit recovers the province. 

1646. Port and tonnage duties granted by Assembly. 

1647. Leonard Calvert dies, June 9th. 

1648. William Stone, governor. His oath first contains 

pledge not to discriminate on account of re- 
ligion. 
1648. Puritans ordered to leave Virginia. 

1648. Governor and majority of Council Protestants. 

1649. Charles II proclaimed by acting Governor Greene. 

1649. "Act Concerning Religion " passed. 

1650. Assembly to sit as two houses. 

1650. Parliament recognizes Lord Baltimore's title. 

1650. Anne Arundel County erected. 

1652. Governor Stone submitted to Commonwealth 
Commissioners. 

1652. Expedition against Eastern Shore Indians. 

1654. Battle of the Severn. 

1654. Cromwell proclaimed Protector. 

1654. Investigation concerning execution of Mary Lee, 
witch. 

1654. Maryland in hands of Parliamentary Commis- 
sioners. 

1654. Calvert County erected. 

1657. Quakers began to appear in Maryland. 

1658. Province restored to Lord Baltimore. 



214 APPENDIX. 

1658. Fendall, governor. 

1658. Assembly henceforth sits as two houses. 

1658. Voting by proxy or in person ceases. 

1658. Charles County erected. 

1658. Proclamation against Quakers. Order of Council. 

1658. Francis Fitzherbert accused of proselyting to 

Roman Church. 

1659. Fendall's ti'easonable intrigues. 

1659. Baltimore County erected. 

1660. Proprietary government re-established. 
1660. Population, 12,000. 

1660. Charles II proclaimed, November. 

1660. Philip Calvert, brother of proprietary, governor. 

1661. Talbot County erected. 

1 66 1. Act to create a mint. Shilling to be equal to 
ninepence sterling. 

1661. Navigation Act passed by Long ParHament, en- 

forced by Charles II. 

1662. Charles Calvert, governor, son of proprietary. 
1662. Agitation of question of application of English 

statutes. 

1665. Quakers holding minor offices in Maryland. 

1665. Population, 16,000. 

1666. Somerset County erected. 
1666. Acts of Naturalization. 
1666. Treaty with Indians. 

1669. Dorchester County erected. 

1671. Population, 20,000. 

1672. George Fox in Maryland. 
1674. Cecil County erected. 

1674. Restraint upon ordinaries, — taverns. 

1674. John Connor condemned for witchcraft. 



APPENDIX. 21$ 

1675. Thos. Truman's brutality to Indians. 

1675. Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, dies. 

1676. Charles, third Lord Baltimore, returns to England. 
1676. Cecil, infant son, nominally governor. 

1676. Rev. Mr. Yeo's descriptive letter. 

1678. Thos. Notley, governor. 

1680. Charles Lord Baltimore returned to Maryland. 

1 68 1. Charter of Pennsylvania given. 

1 68 1. Qualification of voter, to be a freeholder. 

1682. The Lower House refused to receive members of 

the Upper House wearing swords. 

1683. Conditions of Plantation ceased to be operative. 

Land to be purchased henceforth. 

1684. Lord Baltimore returned to England. 

1684. Benedict Leonard, infant son, nominally governor. 
1684. Lord Baltimore ordered by king to put all oflBces 
in the hands of Protestants. 

1687. Quo warranto issued by James II against Lord 

Baltimore. 

1688. Proprietary by proclamation relieved Quakers 

of oath in testamentary cases. 

1688. President of Lower House represented the ex- 

tremely immoral condition of colony. 

1689. Protestant Revolution. 

1689. Declaration of Protestant Association printed on 
printing press in the colony. 

1692. Maryland became a royal province. 

1692. Sir Lionel Copley, governor. 

1692. "Act for service of Almighty God and the Estab- 
lishment of the Protestant Religion." 

1692. Quakers allowed to " affirm." 

1693. Sir Edmund Andros, governor. 



2l6 APPENDIX. 

1694. Sir Francis Nicholson, governor. 
1694. Annapolis made seat of government. 

1694. Act for maintaining free schools. 
1694-5. Epidemic among cattle and hogs. 

1695. Public post established between Potomac and 

Philadelphia. 
1695. Prince George's County erected. 
1695. Second act for maintaining free schools. 

1695. Gov. Nicholson proposes a Bishop, with a seat 

in the Upper House. 

1696. King William's School founded, Annapolis. 

1697. King William presented library to Annapolis. 

1699. Nathaniel Blackistone, governor. 

1700. Indian troubles on borders of Maryland. 

1702. Provisions of Toleration Act extended to colony. 

1704. John Seymour, governor. 

1704. Test Oath imposed, abjuration of Pretender's 
claims. 

1706. Queen Anne's County erected. 

1706. Toleration Act of William and Mary fully intro- 
duced. 

1709. Lloyd, governor. 

1 710. Population, 30,000. 

1 714. John Hart, governor. 

1 714. Benedict Leonard Calvert, fourth Lord Baltimore. 

1 71 5. Proprietary government re-established. 
171 5. Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore. 

171 5. Population, 44,000. 

1716. Various test oaths introduced from England. 

The year after the " Rising." 

171 7. Export duty on tobacco to proprietary in place 

of quit-rents, temporary. 
1720. Charles Calvert, governor. 



APPENDIX. 217 

1 72 1. Scotch prisoners come in. 

1722. Question of application of English statutes; lasted 

ten years. 

1723. Act passed for free schools in each county. 

1727. Benedict Leonard Calvert, governor. 

1728. Town of Baltimore created. 

1 73 1. Sam. Ogle, governor. 

1732. Charles Lord Baltimore in colony and acting as 

governor. Governor Ogle succeeds him. 

1733. Fees of office established by proclamation. 
1735. Decision rendered in matter of boundary between 

Lord Baltimore and Wm. Penn. 

1739. Dissensions about proprietary's revenues; also 

about settling fees by proclamation; also the 
establishment of new offices with fees. 

1740. Attempt against the Spanish settlements. 
1742. Thomas Bladen, governor. 

1742. Worcester County erected. 

1745. Maryland Gazette started, Annapolis. 

1748. Frederick County erected. 

1748. Population, whites 94,000, blacks 36,000. 

1 75 1. Frederick Lord Baltimore succeeds his father. 

1753. Horatio Sharpe, governor. 

1754. Commencement of French War. 

1755. Indian ravages. 

1755. Braddock's defeat. 

1756. Population, whites 107,963, blacks 46,225. 

1757. Indian hostilities, western part of Maryland. 

1758. Capture of Fort Duquesne. 

1761. Population, whites 114,332, blacks 49^675. 

1761. Tobacco shipped annually, 28,000 hhds.; value, 

14,000 pounds; other exports, value 80,000 

pounds currency. 



2l8 APPENDIX. 

1 761. English imports, 160,000 pounds. 

1 761. Iron manufactured, 2500 tons pig, 600 tons bar. 

1763 Close of French War. 

1765. Proprietary's revenue from Port duty, £1000 
sterling; Tobacco duty, £1543; Fines and 
forfeitures, £400. 

1765. The Stamp Act passed, March 226.. September, 
Maryland seized first possible moment to pro- 
test against Stamp Act. Stamp distributor 
burned in effigy in various places. September, 
Commissioners appointed to general congress 
at New York. 

1765. October: General congress met. Governor 

Sharpe declares it impossible to execute Act. 
November: Frederick County Court declares 
Act unconstitutional. 

1766. Sons of Liberty formed in Baltimore. Legal 

business carried on without stamped paper. 
March i8th. Stamp Act repealed. 

1767. Attempt to tax by duty on paper, tea, etc. 

1768. June 8th, Maryland Assembly protests. 

1769. Governor Eden succeeds Governor Sharpe. 

1769. June 20th, Non-Importation Association formed. 

1770. Proclamation of fees and clergy dues. 

1770. Duty taken ofif from some articles. 

1 771. Frederick Lord Baltimore dies. Henry Harford 

succeeds. 
1 771. Value of quit-rents, net, 7500 pounds sterling. 
1771. Proprietary's income from province 64,000 dollars. 

1773. Harford County erected. 
"^yyS- Caroline County erected. 

1774. Boston Port Bill passed. 



APPENDIX. 219 

1774. The "Peggy Stewart" burnt, Oct. 19th. 

1774. The Continental Congress met, September 5th. 

Non-importation agreement. Restrictions on 

exports. 
1774. Population of Maryland, 320,000. 

1774. June 22d, convention met at Annapolis; govern- 

ment of province assumed by it. 

1775. April 19th, Battle of Lexington. 

1775- ]^^y> articles of association formed in Maryland; 
basis of temporary government of province. 

1776. June 28th, delegates to General Congress autho- 

rized to join the other colonies in Declaration 
of Independence. 

1776. July 6th, Maryland Convention declared the state 
independent. 

1776. Governor Eden withdrew from province, June 24. 

1776. July 30, new convention provided for. Conven- 
tion met Aug. 14. 

1776. Declaration of Rights adopted, Nov. 3d. 

1776. Constitution adopted, Nov. 8th. 

1777. First Assembly under State government, Feb. 5th. 
1777. Thos. Johnson, first governor of State. 

1777. Confederation formed. 

1779 Thos. Sim Lee, second governor. 

1780. Confiscation Bill passed. 

1781. Maryland joins Confederation, the public lands 

having been ceded by New York and Virginia. 



220 APPENDIX. 



Battles in which Maryland Troops took part. 

1776. Battle of Long Island. 

1776. Storming of Fort Washington. 

1776. Battle of Trenton. 

1777. Battle of Princeton, 
1777. Attack on Staten Island. 
1777. Battle of Brandywine. 
1777. Battle of German town. 

1777. Fort Mifflin. 

1778. Battle of Monmouth. 

1780. Maryland Line ordered to Southern department. 

1780. Battle of Camden. 

1781. Battle of Cowpens. 

1 78 1. Battle of Guilford Court House. 

1781. Batde of Hobkirk's Hill. 

1 781. Assault on Ninety-Six. 

1 78 1. Batde of Eutaw Springs. 

1 78 1. Siege of Yorktown, Oct. 19th. 



appendix. 221 

"The Cases." 

" The cases " submitted by Rev. Andrew White, Jesuit 
father, for solution to Henry More, provincial in England, 
by whom they were sent to Rome. These cases will be 
found to embrace the extravagant claims of the Roman 
ecclesiastics under the canonical and civil law, by which, 
although always opposed in England, they were enabled 
in other countries to wield such extensive powers, and to 
foster such excessive abuses. The points chiefly notice- 
able are the exemption of the clergy from the courts and 
statutes of the realm, the control of testamentary cases, 
and the interference in the matter of marriage. The Bull 
In coena Domini, to which reference is made in "the 
cases" in various places, "Asserts the full supremacy of 
the Pope over all persons and powers, temporal and eccle- 
siastical. That decree forbids all persons whatsoever, 
directly or indirectly, to violate, depress, or restrain the 
ecclesiastical liberties or rights of the Apostolic See and 
Church of Rome, howsoever or whensoever obtained, or 
to be obtained, under pain of excommunication; and all 
who presume to oppose any of its provisions, are left under 
the displeasure of Almighty God." 

" The cases " will be found to bring into juxtaposition 
and contrast these extravagant ecclesiastical claims, and 
the definite position of the English legislation. The 
question at issue was whether the principles of English 
legislation by king, lords and commons should extend to 
Maryland, or whether Lord Baltimore, the absolute lord, 
being a Roman Catholic, was bound in conscience to rec- 
ognize the rights of the clergy as possessed and exercised 
in Roman Catholic countries. In response to the ques- 



222 APPENDIX. 

tion. Lord Baltimore quickly assumed a very decided posi- 
tion. 

"The Cases. 

" In a country (as this is) newly planted, and depending 
wholly upon England for its subsistence, where there is 
not, (nor can not be, until England be reunited to the 
Church) any ecclesiastical discipline established (by law 
of the Province or grant of the prynce) nor provinciall 
synod held, nor spiritual courts erected, nor the canon 
laws accepted, nor ordinary or other ecclesiastical persons 
admitted (as such), nor Catholic religion publickly allowed : 
and whereas three parts of the people, or foure (at least) 
are (1641) hereticks, I desire to be resolved: 

P Whether a lay Catholic can, with a safe conscience, 
take charge or government of an office in such a country 
as this, where he may not nor dare, discharge all the 
duties and obligations of a Catholic magistrate, nor yeald 
and mayntaine to the Church all her rights and liberties 
which Shee hath in other Catholic country es? 

IP Whether the lay Catholics (in such a country as 
this) are bound to accept or admit of all the canon law 
and in speciall of the Councill of Trent (extra sidem) or 
whether the canon law (as such) binds in this country 
afore it be accepted by some law or custom. 

III<* Whether the exemptions of the clergy for their 
persons, lands, goods, Tennants, Domestiques, or privilege 
of sanctuary to theyr houses or churches, etc., are due to 
them of Divine right, by immediate grant from Christ to 
his Church, so that princes becoming Christians, were 
instantly obliged in conscience to allow and confirme 
those exemptions, or at least to permit and suffer the 
Church to practice and enjoy them ; or whether they hould 



APPENDIX. 



223 



them of the free and voluntary guift and devotion of pious 
princes and states, so that in a countrey newly erected, or 
becoming Xtian, a grant or charter from the prynce 
thereof of such libertyes and exemption is necessary before 
the clergy of such (a) country can clayme them as theyr 
right and due in point of conscience; and whether before 
such a grant, admittance or allowance of their priviledges, 
may the state practice contrary to them without sacri- 
ledges, or incurring the censures Bullcs coence. 

IVo Whether houlding of Courts with external coer- 
cive jurisdiction, be a part of the powers of the Keys left 
by Christ to his Church, or whether it be a part of the 
sword, put by God into the hands of princes, and from 
them granted unto spiritual ordinaryes: and where eccle- 
siastical tribunals are here to be erected, with such power 
of external coercive jurisdiction, may the prynce erect by 
his own charter, or must it be done by special commission 
and delegation of the See Apostolique? 

V^ Whether the conusance of causes testamentary 
belongs to the spirituall Court out of the Nature of the 
causes themselves, and of the Church's proper right, so 
that Xtian prynces had no rightfull power to heare and 
determine them; or whether princes becoming Christian, 
did of theyr voluntary election sever theyr causes from 
theyr crown, and commit them to the spirituall ordinaryes, 
in consideration of some connexion and dependence 
which those causes have with some part of Xtian doctrine, 
which must be sought from the mouth of the priest, or in 
presumption of theyr faithfulness in discharging of their 
trusts? 

VP Whether in such a countrey as this, may lay 
judges, being Catholique, by commission from the Lord. 



224 APPENDIX. 

Proprietary, or appointment of the law of the country, 
prove wills, and committ administrations of the goods of 
the deceased, intestate, or whether they must have an 
intention to do it as delegates of the See Apostolique, and 
are obliged to endeavor with efifect to procure such dele- 
gation or else incur the censures of the BuUce coencB. 

VIP Whethei in such a country as this, may a Catho- 
lique refuse to prove and record a will for this reason, 
because it giveth legacyes for masses to be sayd for the 
soule of the deceased, and conteynes in it the profession 
of the testator, to dye a member of the Roman Catholique 
Church, out of which there is no salvation, with other 
passages contrary to the religion of England, or whether 
he is bound to prove it, though the Lord Proprietor may 
incur danger for such a record? 

VHP Whether Catholiques, being members of the 
General Assembly in such a country as this, may consent 
to the making of laws touching causes testamentary, and 
namely to a law which shall appoint the residue of the 
estate of the deceased persons, after all debts discharged 
and legacyes payed, to be employed to public uses of the 
state, and not to pious uses as it is in the other Catholique 
Countryes? 

IX<* Whether Catholiques, being members of the Gen- 
eral Assembly in such a country as this, may consent to a 
lawe prohibiting the bequeathing or otherwise aliening, 
of any fee to spiritual persons or religious houses, with- 
out leave of the prynce, and voiding all guifts and aliena- 
tions made otherwise? 

X® Whether a Catholique Executor or Adm% in such 
a country as this, may observe the order of administering 
the goods of the deceased, used and prescribed in Eng- 
land (viz. to discharge first the debts due to the prynce, 



APPENDIX. 



225 



then executions, then judgments, etc.); or whether he is 
bound to observe ordinem restitutiones deUvered by 
Casuists (as Bonacina and others) viz. to discharge first 
the debtes due to spirituals, and after lay debtes, in ordi- 
neris, and whether a Catholique may refuse such an illegal 
account, and compel the Executor and administrator to 
satisfy creditors according to the laws of England? 

Xlo Whether may Catholiques, being members of a 
general Assembly, in such a country as this, consent to 
lawes touching causes matrimoniall, as to appoint the pub- 
lishing of banns (for politique considerations) and to pro- 
hibit marriage without such banns published, or license 
obtained from the Commissary being lay; or to limit the 
degrees of consanguinity within which marriage shall not 
be contracted, or for the tryall and determinings of causes 
matrimonial, or whether may a Catholique being lay under 
the prynce, state, grant licenses of marriage, and by com- 
mission from the prynce try and determine such causes 
according to the laws of the country, or in defect thereof 
according to the common law, without incurring the cen- 
sure B. Ca.? 

XIP Whether may Catholiques being members etc., 
consent to a lawe prohibiting the marriage of apprentices 
without the consent of theyr masters or miss'ts, and impos- 
ing penalties upon the priest solemnizing, etc., and 
whether such a law be against liberty of marriage? 

XIIP Whether may CathoHques being members (of 
Assembly) consent to a lawe which for publique custom 
barrs the female from inheriting, or houlding of lands, 
unless they marry within a time limited (only leaving them 
a liberty to sell or dispose thereof to theyr best advantage) 
and is such a law against conscience? 



226 APPENDIX. 

XIV<^ Whether land granted by the Lord Proprietor 
to religious persons by the ordinary and common condi- 
tions of plantations, doth EG ipso (because granted to reli- 
gious) become spiritual fee, and exempt from laica onera ? 

XV"^ If a trespass be pretended to be committed upon 
the lands held by Religious persons, whether may the 
Religious, without trying the trespasse in some court 
(spiritual or temporal) proceed against the pretended tres- 
passer by putting in force against him the censures Bullae 
Ccenae ? And whether by such declarations the party 
be really and to all spiritual effects involved in the 
censures, afore to be adjudged a tresspasser upon theyre 
land in some court? 

XVI^ When grants of lands, made by the prynce to 
several persons lay and Religious, are found prejudiciall to 
the publique, and fit to be reformed, whether may Cath'ls, 
being members (of Assembly) consent to a law reforming 
all such grants? And whether may such a general lawe 
include the grants made to the Religious; and whether 
may the prynce, by virtue of such a law, resume or reform 
such grants made to them afore, or with a voluntary sur- 
render of them by the Religious? 

XVI P Whether in such a country as this may the 
prynce or secular Judge, being a Catholique, summon 
ecclesiastical persons to the General Assembly, or draw 
them into secular courts where they are defendants in 
actions of debt, trespass, etc., and may he give sentence 
therein, as lawful Judge, and execute it upon theyr per- 
sons, lands, etc., without incurring the censures of Bullae 
Coenae? 

XVIIP Whether may the secular Judge, being a 
Catholique, proceed 1 o the trial of clerks being in orders, 



APPENDIX. 227 

for any offence against the peace etc. of the Lord Pro- 
prietor, or for capital cryme extending to the loss of life 
or members, without incurring, etc. 

XI X« Whether may Catholiques, being (members of 
Assembly) consent to lawes imposing general contribu- 
tions toward public charges, for the necessary support of 
the prynce, or defence of the country, and whether are 
spiritual persons, their lands, etc., included (for want of 
exemption)? And whether may the secular Judge, being 
Catholique, proceed against such spiritual persons, etc. or 
religious houses, (without special and expresse license 
from the see Apost.)? Or may he accept such imposition 
from such spiritual persons voluntarily without incurring 
etc.? 

XX^' Whether the representative body mett in Gen- 
eral Assembly, may make lawes to dispose of the interests 
of particular persons, or of clergymen, not being present, 
nor having proxies in sueh Assembly (though lawfully 
summoned thereto), nor otherwise holding Synods pro- 
vinciall, wherein theyr consents to such laws might be 
expected, and whether are such laws against conscience?" 

[Stonyhurst MSS., Anglia, Vol. IV, No. 108 k, quoted by B. T. 
Johnson verbatim, in The Fotaidation of Maryland.'] 

It was a contest between the older civilization and the 
new, between the freer constitution which was rapidly 
growing up in England, wherein all estates in the realm 
were coming to recognize and to occupy their true position 
under the civil government, and that former condition 
when every estate, and most notably the Church, was 
struggling for the mastery. 



228 APPENDIX. 

It was the last effort of the Church, and thus made 
Maryland historic soil. Other contests had to be entered 
into against royal despotism in England, and the attempted 
aristocratical sway by Parliament over America, before the 
victory of civilization in the dominion of the people was 
complete. This struggle and defeat of the ecclesiastical 
minority in Maryland was the beginning of a rapidly 
approaching end. 

Memorial sent to Rome with the " Twenty Cases," by 
the Provincial, Father More, and laid before the Sacred 
Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith: 

"The provincial of the Society of Jesus, in England, 
humbly represents to your Eminence that in the month of 
June, 1632, the King of England granted to the noble 
baron of Baltimore, a Catholic, in propriety, a certain 
province on the sea coast of North America, inhabited by 
infidels, which is this day called the Land of Mary, or 
Maryland, after the reigning Queen of England. The 
said baron immediately treated with Father Richard 
Blount, at that time provincial, at the same time writing 
Father General, earnestly begging that he would select 
certain fathers as well for confirming the Catholics in the 
faith, and converting the heretics, who were designed to 
colonize that country, as w^ell for propagating the faith 
among the infidels and savages. The affair was sur- 
rounded with many and heavy difficulties, /<?r in leading 
the colony to Maryland, by far the greater part were 
heretics, also the country itself, a meridie Virginics ab 
Aquilone, is esteemed to be a New England, that is, two 
provinces full of English Calvinists and Puritans; so that 
not less, nay, perhaps, greater dangers threaten our fathers 



APPENDIX, 



229 

in a foreign than in their native land of England. Nor is 
the baron himself able to find support for the fathers, nor 
can they expect sustenance from heretics hostile to 
the faith, nor from the Catholics, for the most part poor, 
nor from the savages, who live after the manner of wild 
beasts. 

" The zeal of the said Father Provincial conquered these 
and other dif^culties, and at first two fathers were sent 
out, as it were, to explore and ascertain if there might 
be any hope of the gain of souls, when the country should 
appear 'white to the harvest.' Some years ago, a geo- 
graphical description of this country was presented to his 
Eminence, Cardinal Barberini, protector, with an humble 
petition that he would deign to receive the Fathers sent out 
there, under the patronage of his kind protection, equally 
with the rest in England, so that the matter might be 
transacted in the most secret way and without offence to 
the state of England. After this the fathers indeed in- 
creased both in numbers and in courage, in hunger and in 
want, in frequent diseases, which were fatal to some, and, 
lastly, through various dangers, applied themselves with 
constancy to the salvation of souls, learnt the Savage 
language, which is composed of various dialects, com- 
posed a dictionary, a grammar, and a Catechism for the 
use of the infidels, and the Divine goodness was pleased, 
so to favor these attempts that, beside others, a certain 
Emperor, having many tributary kings under him, with 
his wife and family and some of his ministers, were 
brought to the faith, and unless hindered, 'a domestices 
fidei,' 2. great door was laid open to the gospel. These 
impediments, and severe ones, did indeed arise, and from 
those from whom they were the least due. 



230 APPENDIX. 

" For since the said baron was unable to govern Mary- 
land in person, he appointed as his substitute a certain 
Mr. Lewger his secretary, who was formerly a minister 
and preacher, and being converted to the faith, retained 
yet much of the leaven of heresy; for he still maintained 
those dogmas so justly offensive to Catholic ears, — that 
no external jurisdiction was given by God to the Supreme 
Pontiff, but merely an internal one in foro conscientm, 
that no immunity of goods or persons was due to him, or 
any other ecclesiastics, except as such lay princes and 
seculars chose to confer upon him or them; that it would 
be a great offence, to be mulct by punishment, to e>»ercise 
any jurisdiction whatsoever, even of absolving from sins, 
without special license from the baron, from whom all 
lawful jurisdiction was derivable. That a virgin, making 
a vow of virginity, and not marrying after the twenty- 
fifth year of her age, could not hold lands by heirship, 
coming from her parents, but that they must be sold, and 
if the party refused to do (so), then by compulsory sale. 
That the General Assembly or Parliament possesses so 
great an authority over the property of all, that it could 
dispossess every one it chose of their all, even to the under- 
garment, for the use of the Republic, and other such like 
propositions of the said Mr. Lewger are comprehended 
in 20 questions which are laid before this Sacred Congre- 
gation by the hands of the Secretary. 

"Therefore this Secretary, having summoned the Par- 
liament in Maryland, composed with few exceptions of 
heretics and presided over by himself in the name of the 
Lord Baltimore himself (probably in 1640) he attempted 
to pass the following laws repugnant to the Catholic 
faith and ecclesiastical immunities: That no virgin can 



APPENDIX. 231 

inherit, unless she marries before 29 years of age; that no 
ecclesiastic shall be summoned in any cause, civil or crim- 
inal, before any other than a secular judge; that no eccle- 
siastic shall enjoy any privilege, except such as he is able 
to show ex scriptura, nor to gain anything for the Church, 
except by the gift of the prince, nor to accept any site for 
a church or cemetery, nor any foundation from a convert 
Indian King, nor shall any one depart from the province 
even to preach the Gospel to the infidels by authority of 
the See Apostolic, without a license from the lay magis- 
trate; nor shall any one exercise jurisdiction within the 
province which is not derived from the baron, and such 
like. 

'' The fathers of the Society warmly resisted this foul 
attempt, professing themselves ready to shed their blood 
in defence of the faith, and the liberty of the Church,— 
which firmness greatly enraged the Secretary, who imme- 
diately reported to the Baron Baltimore that his jurisdic- 
tion was interrupted by the fathers of the Society, whose 
doctrine was inconsistent with the government of the 
province. Hence, the said baron, being offended, became 
alienated in his mind from the fathers of the Society of 
Jesus, and at first ipso facto seized all their lands, and let 
them to others, as though he were the lord and proprietor 
of them, although King Patuen had given them the same 
lands, when he was a catechumen, upon the express con- 
dition for supporting priests who had brought his subjects 
to the true knowledge, faith and worship of God. The 
said baron, with others favorable to his opinions, began 
to turn his attention to the expulsion of the fathers and 
the introducing others in their stead, who would be more 
pliable to his Secretary. Therefore he procured last year. 



232 APPENDIX. 

to petition the sacred congregation of the propagation of 
tlie faith, in the name of the CathoHcs of Maryland, to 
grant a prefect and priests of the secular clergy, faculties 
for the same mission, making no mention in the mean- 
time, of the labours of the fathers undertaj<:en in that 
harvest, nor expressing the motives which induced him 
to substitute new priests. And in order that he might 
have some new grounds to urge for calling away the 
fathers of the Society from thence, he proposed certain 
points, similar to those laid before the Sacred Congregation, 
to be presented to the provincial by the hands of the 
Secretary, that he might subscribe them in the name of 
himself and of the fathers in Maryland. 

" But the Sacred Congregation, being entirely ignorant 
of these matters, granted the petition, and in the month 
of August, 1 64 1, faculties were expedited from the 
Sacred Congregation, and were transmitted to Dom 
Rosetti, now Archbishop of Tarsus. But since, perhaps, 
either the prefect is not as yet appointed, or the faculties 
delivered, but are as yet it is hoped, in the hands of Father 
Phillips, the Confessor of the Queen of England, the said 
provincial humbly begs of your Eminence to deign to 
direct that the said faculties be superseded if the matter 
is yet entire, or if by chance the faculties are delivered, 
that the departure of new priests may be retarded for so 
long as to allow the Holy See to decide upon what is best 
to be done for the good of souls. 

"The fathers do not refuse to make way for other 
labourers, but they humbly submit for consideration 
whether it is expedient to remove those who first entered 
into that vineyard at their own expense, who for seven 
years have endured want and sufferings, etc.; who have 



APPENDIX. 233 

lest four of their own confreres, labouring faithfully unto 
death; who have defended sound doctrine and the liberty 
of the Church, with odium and temporal loss to them- 
selves; who are learned in the language of the Savages, 
of which the priests to be substituted by the Baron Balti- 
more are entirely ignorant, and which priests either allow 
or defend that doctrine from which it must needs be that 
contentions and scandals should arise, and the spark of 
faith be extinguished, which begins to be kindled in the 
breast of the infidels. 

" Nevertheless the fathers profess themselves ready with 
all submission either to return to England, from Alary- 
land, or to remain there and to labor, even to death, for 
the faith and the dignity of the Holy See, as may seem fit 
to the prudence, the goodness and charity of your Emi- 
nence." 

[Quoted by B. T. Johnson, in The Foundation of Maryland, from 
Stonyhurst MSS., Anglia, Vol. IV, 108 k, verbatim.] 



INDEX 



146 



Adventurers, Engrlish, the causes 

that animated them, 11 

Alexander VI, Pope, grant of 

1493, 16 

American Revolution, 33, 163 

Arrow-heads, the consideration 
in the Maryland charter, 37, 58 

Avalon, charter for, 33 

advowson of churches to 

grantee, 36 

a failure as a province, 45 

Amount spent by Cal verts in 
founding- Avalon and Maryland, 46 

American wilderness little es- 
teemed by the king, 54 

Absolute lord, title of Lord Bal- 
timore, 54 

Assemblies provided for by 
Maryland and Avalon charters 63 

law of 1638 provided for 

composition of, 94 

proxies allowed, 94 

divided into two houses, 95 

lower house claimed func- 
tions and power of House of 
Commons, 

lower house, conduct of 

during French War, 154 

Authority and jurisdiction re- 
stored to Lord Baltimore, 71 

Allegiance, oath of, 73 

"Act concei-ning religion" of 
1649, 100, 107 

joint act of proprietary and 

people, 113 

reviewed by sections, 115 

use of it made by Lord Bal- 
timore, 

of 1654, 

Anabaptists in Holland granted 
religious freedom. 

Ark and the Dove, 

Act of establishment of religion, 
review of features, 

Abbot, Archbishop, and Cal- 
vert's change of faith, 143 

Agitation, of extension of Eng- 
lish statutes to colony, 151 

Agitation of requisitions for 
French War, 153 

Agitation of proclamation ques- 
tion, 158 



118 
113 



105 

107 



133 



Arbitrary government in reign 
of George III, 173 

Attorneys privileged, "one of 
grand griev^ances," 195 

act to reform, 195 

certain number to be ad- 
mitted, 195 

fees fixed by law, 195 



Brazil discovered 1499, 17 

Baltimore,Cecilius, Lord, taught 
by father's experience, 35 

sole grantee, 35 

despair of colony in 1644, 91 

principle in administration, 93 

authorizes Governor to as- 
sent to laws, 94 
Baltimore, Benedict, Lord, 
change of faith, 143 

pensioned by Queen Anne, 143 

Brownists from Holland, 36 

Buckingham, Duke of, 48 

Boundaries of Maryland, 63 

contention settled 1760, 63 

Blockhouse built, 69 

Berkeley drove out Puritans 

from Virginia. 71, 85 

Bulla in cmna Domini, 88, 114 

Burgesses as composing assem- 
bly, 9^ 
Bartholomew, massacre of, 105, 117 
Bray, Dr., commissary, 139 
Bachelors taxed, 154 
Branding irons, 190, 191 
Benefit of clergy, 193 



Cabots. the, sent out by Henry 

^^^' • • . 1? 

commission to, i-o 

Commission to determine a N. 
andS. line between posses- 
sions of Spain and Portugal, 16 
Canada, French possession ot, 17 
Charles I. 30, 50 
Charles II bestowed Dutch pos- 
sessions on his brother, 19 
jealous of New England col- 
onies, . ^ 27 
and Habeas Corpus Act, 39 



236 



INDEX. 



Charles II and charter to Wm. 
Penn, 

Conquest, right obtained by, 

territory so obtained be- 
longed to king, 

Civil war in England, how 
brought on, 33 

Charter, a law bestowing privi- 
leges, 

to New England 1630, 

Governor to exercise mar- 
tial law, 

to Duke of York, 

of Maryland, description of, 

gifts of hereditary, 

titles, honors, &c., to be 

granted under, 

Charters by royal grant, 

comparison of, 

radical ditference between. 

Cost of settlement of Maryland, 

Councils for Virginia, 

Colony, royal, laws submitted 
to king. 

Consideration in charter of Ava- 
lon, 

of Maryland, 

of Carolina, 

of Georgia, 

Conflict in colonies between two 
great principles. 

Colonial charter, no law in force 
without people's consent. 

Churches, as provided for in the 
Maryland charter, 

in charter of Carolina, 

Calvert, George, description of, 

oflices held by, and enter- 
prises of, 

Carolana, 

a great speculator, 

change of religious faith, 47, 

Calvert, Cecilius, description 
of, 49, 

age at succession to name 

and estates, 

Calvert, Leonard, Governor 

took refuge in Virginia, 

Court Leet and Court Baron, 

Coming of the colonists, 

Chalmers quoted, 

Criminals sent to America, 

Claiborne and Kent Island, 

and Ingle, 

and Bennett, 

Church and State, alliance of, 

Cause of the frequent uprisings 
in Maryland, 

Complaints against Lord Balti- 
more's administration, 

Charles, the third Lord Balti- 
more, 

testimony as to religious 

bodies in Maryland, 78, 



character of, 123 

charges against, 133 

private rights preserved in 

Protestant revolution, 135 

died in 1714, 143 

Conditions of plantation, terms 
and amount of land given, 80 

of 1641, 88 

Corn waleys, Thomas, number of 
servants brought over, 81 

Canon Law and the Jesuits' 
claims, 86 

Common Law, the right of all 
the inhabitants of Maryland 
to, 98, 149 

Code of 1639, the Maryland con- 
stitution, 98 

Commonwealth, English, and 
religious f I'eedom, 103 

Conscience and the contentions 
it has wrought, 103 

Church matters before Protest- 
ant revolution and afterwards, 136 

Church of England in great mi- 
nority in 1693, 131 

why chosen for established 

maintenance. 131 

Churches built by tax, how 
levied, 134 

Current expenses, how raised, 135 

Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore, 
description of, 147 

and Frederick Prince of 

Wales, 148 

died in 1751, 148 

Contribution to French War, 
1754, 154 

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 160 

Clergy tax and the proclama- 
tion, 160 

statement of the question, 161 

Confederation of the States and 
Maryland, 163 

Commissioner for stamped pa- 
per, how treated, 170 

Convention, Maryland, June, 
1774, 175 

Continental Congress of 1774, 178 

Cole, Josias, Quaker, in Mary- 
land, 200 

Christison, Wenlock, " 201 

Connor, John, witchcraft, 303 



Description of Maryland histo- 
rians, \'1 

Division of the East and West 
between Spain and Portugal, 15 

Dutch settlements on the Hud- 
son and Delaware, 19 

Dutch, English at war with, 19 

Dutch and Swedes occupy 
shores of the Delaware, 64 



INDEX. 



237 



Development of civil and relig- 
ious liberty, 34 
Delaware, Penn's desire for, 64 
Delaware territory, how lost to 

Lord Baltimore, 64 
Dulany, Daniel, 160 
his statement of colonial po- 
sition during- stamp act agita- 
tion, 169 

and home manufactures, 170 

Declaration of Independence by 
Maryland, 183 

by United States. 184 

Ducking-stool, 189 

" Drawing '' "hanging," "quar- 
tering," ''burning," 193 
Debts, law concerning, 193 
Drunkenness punished, 197 

E 

English people apathetic in dis- 
covery during 16th century, 9 
subjects, i-ights of in colo- 
nies usurped by king, 21 
freemen, rights of, when as- 
serted, 49 

thought, condition of in 1635, 50 

Elizabeth, Queen, 18, 30, 31 

Elector Palatine, son-in-law to 

James 1, 49 

Emoluments of the proprietary, 

58,59 
Emigrants recalled to take oaths, 74 
Establishment of the church de- 
scribed, 131, 133 

a police measure, 133 

a compromise measure, 135 

Education, condition of in 1689, 138 
promoted by Protestant re- 
volution, 138 
Eden, Governor, 150, 163 
Eddis, testimony concerning con- 
dition of Maryland, 175, 183 
Expense to Maryland of the Re- 
volution, 185 
Ears, cropping of, 191 



France and Germany, attempts 

of to colonize, 10 

French War, 17, 155 

French marriage, proposed, of 

Prince of Wales, 48 

French Revolution, cause of, 133 
Feudalism waning, 17, 136 

Florida, French settlement in, 18 
Founders of States, memory of 

cultivated, 43 

Founders of Maryland not noted, 43 
Fendall, Governor, 71 

Felons sent to Maryland, 84 



First colony, constituents of, 93 
Freemen, all sat in first assem- 
blies, 94 
Frederick, sixth Lord Balti- 
more, description of, 149 

died, 149 

Fees of colonial offices, 158 

Forty pounds poll and Gover- 
nor's proclamation, 160 



Guinea bestowed by Pope on 
the Portuguese 1454, 15 

Gilbert, Sir Humphi'ey, 18 

Gates, Sir Thomas, 18 

Grantees of charters to be at 
their own charges, 34 

Georgia, consideration in chai'- 
ter, 37 

charter and imposition of 

of taxes, 60 

Gold and silver reserved by 
king, 38 

Great Rebellion, causes of, 30 

Germans settled in western 
parts of colony, 85 

Governor enjoined to make no 
religious distinctions in be- 
stowing offices. 111 

Government assumed by the 
people in 1775, 163 

Gerard, Thomas, councillor, 
punished for intoxication, 197 



Harvey, Governor, 1638, 33 

Habeas Corpus extended to col- 
onies, 33, 153 
Henry VII and absolute power, 30 
Hampden. 33 
Heretics in majority from the 

start, 90, 108 

Holland the great exponent of 

religious liberty, 93 

religious pei-secution in, 105 

the States General of, and 

religious freedom, 106 

House, upper, who composed, 95 

lower, who composed, 95 

Holy Church to have all her 

rights, &c., 96 
Hutton, Secretary, 110 
Harford, Henry, 143, 150 
succeeded to property in 

colony, 161, 163 

Hand, loss of, for striking in 

court, 190 



Initiative in legislation, 32, 56, 57 
Ireland, Calvert's possessions in, 46. 



238 



INDEX. 



Immigrants, first company to 

Maryland, 65 

Indians, charges that Claiborne 

tampered with, 69 

- — converted by Jesuits, 86 

treatment of in Maryland, 203 

"Instructions" sent with col- 
ony, 74 
Inquisition in Holland, 105, 117 
Immorality, prevalence of in 
colony, 138, 139, 130 



James I, King, 18, 33, 38 

James II jealous of New Eng- 
land colonies, 27 

flight from England, 131 

Jurisdiction of Lord Baltimore 
overthrown, 71 

Jesuits' work among the In- 
dians, 86 

disqualified by training to 

be members of a free com- 
monwealth, 86 

Lord Baltimore's descrip- 
tion of, 90 

Jurymen, law concerning, and 
their liabilities, 194 



K 



Kent Island, Claiborne's settle- 
ment there, 68, 84 



Laws of nations," decent respect 

for," 17 
of Maryland to be conso- 
nant to reason and not repug- 
nant to laws and customs of 
England, 57 

series of 1639, 96 

Liberty, spirit of, prostrated by 

Wars of Roses, 30 

Legislation, powers of the 

people, 33 

London, Bishop of, to be peti- 
tioned by people of Pennsyl- 
vania for ministers, 38 
LcAvger, Secretary, vilifled by 
Jesuits, 76 

" summoned a Parliament," 

89, 108 

deprived of office, 110 

Locke and legislation for North 

Carolina, 83 

Langton, Stephen, Archbishop, 96 
Laud, Archbishop, 116 

Louis XIV and his edicts, 131 

Lexington, battle of, 184 

Legislation, odds and ends, 187 



M 

Marco Polo, 12 

Marks, twenty, consideration in 

Carolina charter, 37 

Magna Charta, 39, 83, 96, 98 

Monopoly, English, of colonial 

trade, 33 

Ministers, how provided for in 

Penn's charter, 38 
Manors and manorial rights un- 
der charter, 56, 83 
Manors, proposed privileges of, 81 
Maryland first province of Eng- 
lish empire, 61 
charter provided for assem- 
blies, 34 

and religious freedom, 104 

position in regard to Eng- , 

lish Revolution, 133 

development during royal 

government, 154 

and the English debt, 166 

in harmony with the na- 
tional movement, 167 
— and the colonial congress of 
1765, 169 

soldiers, whei-e they fought, 184 

Mortmain, statute of, 76 

Matrimony, claims of Jesuits in 

mattei-s of, 86 

More, Sir Thomas, and relig- 
ious liberty, 105 
Meeting-houses and chapels, 188 
Morality, laws to punish viola- 
tions of, 198 
Marriage of white and negro, 198 

N 

Nicholas, Pope, bestows Guinea 
on Portugal, 15 

Newfoundland, attempted set- 
tlement in 1583, 18, 45 

New Jersey, alienation of juris- 
diction, 19 

New Plymouth, Brownists set- 
tled at, 36 

New England colonies, 27, 29 

North Carolina and aristocratic 
titles, 56 

Negroes in Maryland from be- 
ginning, 65 

Nonconformists, relative num- 
ber of in 1676, 78 

Naturalization of foreigners, 85 

Navigation acts, 130 

Nicholson, Governor, and edu- 
cation, 138 

Non-importation, 170, 174 

Nose, slitting of, 191 

O 

Oaths of allegiance and suprem- 
acy, 73 



INDEX. 



239 



*' Objections answered touching 
Maryland," paper of Provin- 
cial of the Jf suits, 77, 109 

Officers appointed in 1648, 110 

Oath required of Governor and 
Council 1648, 111 

Oaths at time of Protestant 
Revolution, 136 

"Offences" in colonial legisla- 
tion, 193 

Ordinaries regulated, 198 



14 



31 



Portuguese, energy in discovery. 
Pope, claims to bestow coun- 
tries. 
Papacy, assumptions of, 
Prerogative, notions of James I 

and Charles I, 
Parliament silent in colonial 
matters, 

in earlier times only assisted 

king to govern, 33 

Parliament, the Long, 50 

Proprietary colonies, descrip- 
tion of, 27 

lands must be taxed, 155 

government restored, 142 

government, contention 

with fitted for subsequent 
struggles, 145 

Pennsylvania, condition in char- 
ter in respect of submitting 
laws, 29 

cost to Wm. Penn, 58 

Provision in charters for emer- 
gencies, 29 
Penn, Wm., prerogatives lim.ited 

in charter, 29 

Productions of colonies, how 

reached other countries, 32 

Promoting religion as a motive 

for sending out colonies, 34 

Population of colony, how 

made up, 52, 83 

People always liege subjects of 

King of England, 58 

Province, description of, 61 

Philadelphia,built within Mary- 
land territory, 63 
Pocomoke river, naval battle of, 69 
Puritan settlement on the 
Severn, 70 

antagonism to Papists and 

Prelatists, 78 

promises made them before 

coming to Maryland, 85 

Protestant Re volution, 74, 120, 123, 124 

chapel violated, 75 

Priests, Jesuit, claimed to be 

tried by arbitrators, 87 

Policy, bad, of taking all officers 
from small minority, 110 



changed in 1648, 110 

Private rights of Lord Balti- 
more preserved, 125 
Parish libraries, 139 
Proclamation concerning fees, 158 
Pitt, William, 42, 164, 172 
Port Bill of Boston, 175 
Point at issue in stamp and sub- 
sequent acts, 165 
Peggy Stewart, the, and the tea 

in Annapolis harbor, 177 

Persons to be sent to England 
for trial, 179 



Queen Anne, 29 

Quackery, hone in Maryland 
law-making, 82 

Quakers, their objection to es- 
tablishment of church, 134 

Maryland's treatment of, 199 



Rights of aboi'iffines recognized, 12 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 18 

Roanoke Island and attempted 

settlement of, 18 

Removal of persons, pri\ilege 
granted by charter, 30 

of goods, privilege granted 

by charter, 32 
Religion, regulations concern- 
ing in charters, 36 
in heathen world not in- 
volving conscience, 101 
neglect of by Lord Balti- 
more, 127 
Religious liberty, progress of 
suggested by charters, 38 

right of arises late, . 100 

Royal pi-ovince, Maryland made, 125 

advantages to the people, 125 

Roman Catholic worship, and 
the " Instructions," 75 

silence to be observed in 

matters of religion, 75 

unwilling to come to colony, 108 

why repressed 39, 136 

unjust attempt to double 

tax, 157 

Royal taxes, customs, &c., never 

to be imposed, 59 

Resolutions of convention of 
1774, 176 

S 

Spaniards exterminate French 
colony in Florida, 18 

Spanish colonies, gold and sil- 
ver ore reserved, 28 



240 



INDEX. 



Shipping goods from colonies, 33 
Stamped paper and the Mary- 
land charter, 60 
Servants, meaning of the term, 65 
Severn river, battle at mouth of, 69 
Stone, Gov., and the troubles of 

1653, 70, 110 

State prisoners sent to Mary- 
land, 84 
Suffrage, universal, 84 

freehold, 84, 144 

limited by Test Oath, 144 

Sanctuary, claims of Jesuits for 

church and houses, 87 

St. John's College, 139 

Statute laws of England as ap- 
plying to the colony, 149 
Sharpe, Governor, and his prop- 
ositions about stamped paper, 164 
" Sons of Liberty," 170 
Sunday laws, 196 



Taxes and custom dues under 
the charter, 35 

none levied without people's 

consent, 36 

Thirty Years' War, 49, 117 

Testamentary cases, claims of 
Jesuits to, 86 

Taxes, claims of Jesuits to be 
exempted from, 87 

Trial by jury, 98 

Tolerant spirit, development 
by close of 17th century, 135 

Toleration Act extended to col- 
ony, 153 

Tea, tax on it and other articles 
1767, 173 

Treason, what constituted, and 
against whom, 193 

the penalty, 193 

Temperance laws, 196 

Thurston, Thomas, in Maryland, 200 



Upper House of Assembly, 
how composed, 145 

bearing towards Lower 

House, 146 

Unsuccessful party in a suit, 
law concerning, 194 



Virginia, gift to, 18 

edict of 1618, 31 

and persons who brought 

home evil report, 31 

Vaughan, Commander of Kent, 110 
Vestries a returning board for 

taxables, 154 

W 

White horse and the Avalon 
charter, 37 

White, Father, Jesuit mission- 
ary, 35, 8& 

and converts made, 108 

Writ, special, to summon to As- 
sembly, 94 

" Writs of Assistance," and 
other oppressive measures, 173 

William the Silent the exem- 
plar of religious liberty, 105 

his conversion, 106 

William and Mary, Lord Balti- 
more's failure to proclaim, 133 

William's, King, School, 139 

Washington, letter to Governor 
of Maryland, 185 

Witchcraft in Maryland, 301 



York, Duke of, 19 

Yeo, Rev. Mr., testimony of 
condition of Maryland, 139 



ruT.7°^^°^ 




° 014 366 645 1 



